Brixton Beach (47 page)

The young man washes in the public lavatory. He cleans himself fastidiously, for that is part of the process he is embarking on. He has no watch, he sold that long ago to help fund the cause, but instinct tells him he is late for his appointment. He has folded his bedding into his rucksack and now he slings it over his shoulder and hurries towards Stockwell station, the bitter taste of hunger growing in his mouth.

Brixton station is crowded. Alice passes through the barriers with her Oyster card and watches as two men scream at each other, only to be removed forcibly by an armed policeman. There are delays on the Northern Line. Glancing at her watch, Alice goes on to the northbound platform of the Victoria Line. The wind from the tunnel blows against her soft yellow dress, making her feel like a young girl, uncomplicated and free. In nine hours she will be meeting Simon. They have been apart for thirty-six hours, she thinks, shyly, doing her sums, imagining his face.

Having finished his early-morning rounds on the wards, Simon goes into his secretary’s office.

‘You’ve had several calls, sir.’

‘Who?’ he asks.

‘Just your daughter. And Mrs Swann. No message. Just to tell you they called.’

Tessa. What now? He is feeling jumpy again. How foolish of him not to see that Tessa will not let go without a fight. Things could get ugly between them.

Anyone else?’

‘No, sir. Don’t forget you’ve got a meeting at ten, on level seven.’

‘No, no. I’m going to make some phone calls, so I don’t want to be disturbed for about half an hour.’

He hesitates.

‘Unless it’s someone called Alice Fonseka.’

Mentioning her name leaves him breathless. He feels himself blush, but the secretary has her head bent and merely nods.

‘Oh, and I’m expecting some tickets from the Barbican. You don’t know if they’ve arrived by any chance?’

‘Yesterday’s post is on your desk, sir. If they’re not there and don’t arrive in the second post, I’ll give them a ring.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ he says and goes into his room, closing the door softly.

He is suddenly exhausted. I’m not used to this sort of thing, he thinks. He badly wants to speak to Alice. The scene with Tessa has disturbed him more than he realises. He sits uncertain for a moment and then he tries to ring her mobile, but it is switched off. She told him she would be leaving very early as she didn’t want to be late. Most probably she’s in the tube. Closing his eyes, he tries to rid himself of his tension and think only of her. Then he takes out the memories of all the nights he has spent with her so far. Piece by piece, he examines them, arranging them in a line before him. They are the beginning of a collection. A bare arm, a small dark breast with an even darker areola. A fragrant coil of hair faintly stroked with grey. Dark trusting eyes. Just now, in the ward, he talked to an Asian patient, a woman about Alice’s age. He asked her where she came from, and even though it was nowhere near Alice’s home, even though the woman was nothing like Alice, he had been interested. It had been all he could do not to mention Alice. In the end he had told the woman that he knew someone from Sri Lanka. Would he be a better doctor from now on?

‘Oh, Sri Lanka!’ the woman had said. ‘They fight a lot there.’

Don’t you know, he had wanted to say, how it is there? But he had a whole ward waiting and he doubted his ability to recount the things Alice had told him. We need to talk, so much more, he thought, happiness bubbling up. So that one day, many years from now, I will at last be able to understand more fully what it has been like for her. Glancing at his watch, Simon sees it is nearly eight o’ clock.

The man with the rucksack has had his meeting.

‘Your family will be proud of you,’ they told him, praising him for his courage.

At this the man had hesitated for a fraction of a second. He did not want to think of his family.

‘We need to take control, you understand? Before they control us!’

The man gives a nod as he gathers up his rucksack. Now he is on his way at last, heading for the tube station to catch the Northern Line.

At Oxford Circus Alice changes from the Victoria Line on to the Bakerloo. It’s almost ten to eight and the journey has taken her longer than she has expected. With a bit of luck she will get there on time, although the underground is still beset by delays. She had hoped to talk to Simon before she goes to the gallery, but now there won’t be time. She debates whether to take a taxi once she gets to Edgware Road but decides it would be quicker to walk.

At Baker Street they stop. This train terminates here, the public address informs them, ignoring their collective cries of annoyance. Everyone piles out, grumbling. She is going to be late, after all. Unless another train comes along immediately. She wishes she hadn’t dawdled earlier on.

‘One’s just coming now,’ she is told when she questions the guard.

From Baker Street it’s only two stops. Once she’s out she’ll ring the gallery. Then, to her infinite relief, with a muffled roar and a warm sooty breeze, the next train appears at the tip of the tunnel. She won’t be able to call Simon now, he will be on his rounds.

There is a hold-up at Waterloo and the man with the rucksack finds he has to wait five long minutes. When the train finally arrives he can barely squeeze into it and stands squashed against the door. People pushing against his rucksack make him angry. Seeing they are all older than him, all well-dressed office workers, he pushes them back savagely. Rage rises in him once again, almost making him pass out. This country, he thinks, is full of fucking idiots, ruining everything.

At Baker Street, Alice runs along the platform as the train pulls in, looking for a carriage with standing room. A security warning of extra vigilance is being played over the public address. No one has time to listen. Alice resists looking at her watch. She should have remembered there were always delays on the Bakerloo Line. This is the most important appointment of her career to date. Madness lurks on the platform as the train pulls up and the doors open.

‘Mind the gap,’ intones the electronic voice.

The crowd surges forward. Alice stands watching. There is still a bit of room in the carriage, but before she can squeeze herself into it the doors begin to shut. The board says there will be another train along in a minute. She has no choice but to hang on and wait, hoping one more minute won’t make too much of a difference. Too impatient to sit down, she paces the platform. It’s just a quarter to eight. She’s cutting it fine, but she will do it. Just.

Simon sends a few e-mails. Then, before he goes into his meeting, he tries ringing Brixton Beach. He isn’t surprised that Alice does not answer as he knows she is on her way to meet Antonia.

Alice steps into the carriage. The notice is correct; the train has only been a minute in coming. The carriage isn’t full, but she doesn’t bother to sit down. Two stops, that’s all, she thinks with relief. No point in sitting down. She stands facing the door and watches the tunnel whizz past. Dark shadows and orange tungsten light, giving tunnel vision. Someone, a youth about the same age as Ravi, dark beautiful hair falling over his eyes, sits with headphones emitting a loud and rhythmic hiss. He is licking his lips nervously. He closes his eyes once or twice, muttering to himself, moving his head, she supposes, in time to the music. Marylebone. Some people get out, others come in. One stop to go. Two Australian girls with long fair hair sit at the furthest end of the carriage opposite a man with a laptop on his knees, a suitcase beside him. Another man, dressed for the city, sits staring into space. The Australians are laughing out loud. Suddenly Alice has a sharp clear picture of Simon’s hands, long and thin and very tender as
he held her. She sees herself for a single moment as she will be tonight; naked and in his arms. Young again.

The train begins to move slowly forward and the pale youth with the headphones moves towards the door. As she watches him idly, waiting for the train to come into Edgware Road station, Alice thinks again of Ravi. Without warning there is a blinding yellow flash. It reminds her of crocuses in spring or the insides of a mango. The colour seems somehow all wrong. The carriage stretches as though made of India rubber, first one way and then another. The yellow flash seems to go on and on for a long time, but there is no sound, only a stench of something sharp and bitter and impossible to understand. She opens her mouth to cry out and the smell fills her lungs, choking her so that she can hardly breathe. Hot liquid pours over her and she sees herself, falling like a star, as though slain by a streak of tropical light, forever leaving an imprint on the world. Her body curves in a graceful, impossible arc. Just like a child’s drawing of a shooting star. And then, she has no idea how much later, she is outside. There is an odd eerie silence. Soft black dust motes fill the rosy sky in a long ellipse of shapes. Dust falling from the air, she thinks in amazement. After the pause there are other noises which she struggles to identify; the screeches and the screams and other, more elusive sounds interweaving with the distant sounds of traffic. Closing her eyes against the cacophony, she wonders who on earth is doing all the screaming?

‘Don’t move her, call an ambulance!’

‘Clear the path,’ a new voice says loudly. ‘Move, move! And don’t touch her.’

‘Oh God, what could have done this?’

‘Can you hear me?’ a male voice asks.

He sounds agitated, and he’s shouting. I’m not deaf, she thinks. Of course I can hear you. I just can’t move.

‘The ambulance should be here any minute.’

‘Hold on, luv, hold on.’

‘We’re just going to cover you up.’

Like a mistake, she thinks. Or an embarrassment. A coat is draped across her shoulders and her legs. The coat is soft and smells of pipe
tobacco. Voices come to her from a long way away. Whose are they? Muffled and secretive, like the sea when she was a child. Bone white and scorching in the piercing tropical light. Lace-edged with foam, and utterly beautiful.

‘Hold on, luv,’ the man’s voice repeats. It sounds profoundly shocked. And close to breaking.

She has been holding on, for years and years. Holding on like grim death. Pointlessly, mercilessly crushing out her memories, hoping they would finally die down. But always they had seeped cunningly out, hovering like the insects that sat motionless on the broken ceiling fan in her grandfather’s house.

You have to do your time, darling
, her grandfather’s voice comes back to her.
And one day I hope you’ll come back
.

The ride in the ambulance is curiously soothing.

‘Nearly there,’ says the paramedic comfortingly, quietly checking her pulse.

He is reeling off a checklist, making it sound like a litany. Heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, temperature…

‘Can you hear me, luv?’ the woman with the oxygen mask asks as it comes down on her. ‘What’s your name?’

She struggles and someone strokes her head again. Hush! Hush!

‘There, there. Just hang on, hang on, we’re nearly at the hospital.’

She is reminded of her bunk bed in the cabin. On C Deck. The
Fairsea
, the boat was called. The inky blue sea, just like the bottle of Quink in her grandfather’s house. It brings tears to her eyes. But the sea had been a different blue when she was on dry land. Her grandfather’s face is suddenly a blur. The ambulance is slowing down and a frenzy of activity begins. Simon, she thinks, feeling the tears begin to fall. I want to go home, I want you to see the Sea House. And she struggles to keep the beach in her sightline. But they are pulling her about, sticking things into her so she opens her mouth to shout at them. Go away, she wants to say. For God’s sake, can’t you see I’ve had enough? The voices drift towards her and recede again. The voices are fast and reassuring, so why is she not reassured? Her legs feel suddenly heavy. Haemorrhage, they keep saying. White light invades her lids.

Something is put over her. Are they going to bury me alive, she wonders? Simon, she thinks, with sudden urgency. Simon! He is her last chance. She has known this since the first encounter, but never with such force as now. He and Bee, she thinks at last, astonished, they are both part of the same thing.

‘I’m coming back,’ she tells them. ‘Tell Ravi.’

‘Good girl,’ says a voice and she feels something sharp in her arm. ‘Good girl,’ says the voice again.

Opening her eyes she feels the sea breeze again, slight and youthful against her face. The voice sounds warm and familiar, falling on her ears like a benediction. It is filled with the memory of cheap tobacco and the noise inside the conch shell they used to keep for a doorstop. It is all she has ever loved.

‘Good girl!’

Startled, she thinks she can smell the green scent of oranges, wet with the rain, and she feels her skin, tired and stretched as though she has been swimming in the sea. It is the very last thing she remembers.

He hears nothing. The room where the meeting is taking place exists like an inner chamber to a pharaoh’s tomb, without outside light. A fish tank full of small tropical fish swim under the fluorescent bulbs, forever confined to plastic coral fronds. Someone in management had thought it good feng shui. Day or night, it makes no difference to the fish. The meeting continues regardless of the outside world. Simon feels his eyelids grow heavy. Lately all he ever seems to do is go to management policy meetings. They have now been sitting here for over an hour. What a waste of time, he thinks impatiently. He glances at his watch and catches Ralph’s eye. Ralph gives him a considered look. Roughly translated, Simon takes the look to mean ‘Why are you so tired?’ He raises an eyebrow. The door opens and coffee is brought in real jugs with real cups and saucers. There are biscuits.

‘Okay, everyone, let’s take a short break before we deal with the last matter on the agenda.’

The coffee is hot and unusually good. Ralph approaches, cup in hand.

‘Management does all right with their refreshments, I see.’

‘It’s where the money is.’

‘Yes, well…’ Ralph hesitates. ‘So what have you been up to?’ he asks, cocking an eyebrow at Simon.