by Roma Tearne
Outside, the sea moved softly. The beach was empty, the water a churning mass of silvery black. Nothing could distinguish it from the dark unending emptiness of sky.
3
WHEN THE MOMENT SHE HAD DREADED finally arrived and she saw her mother walking slowly up the garden in her faded orange sari, Alice felt her legs grow unaccountably heavy and turn to stone. Kamala coaxed her out on to the verandah and reluctantly down the steps, a bunch of gladioli thrust out in front of her face. Long after she had forgotten her mother’s lop-sided expression of trying not to cry, Alice remembered the deep, burnt orange of the flowers and the shimmering sea-light. She gave Sita an awkward hug and the scent of the flowers passed violently between them. Dazzling sea colours of a certain unbelievable blueness flew into the house while the sound of the cicadas rose and fell in feverish cadence, reminding Alice of the Buddhist monks. It was Kamala who took charge of the situation, enfolding her daughter in a loving embrace, recalling the day Sita had walked in with the newborn Alice. No one else was capable of much. Within minutes Sita was installed in a chair and a cup of weak coriander tea was in her hand.
‘I’ll put your mama’s flowers in a vase in her room,’ Kamala told the child, smiling encouragingly, aware of some indecision. ‘She can see them when she has her rest.’
Alice nodded. She was a murderer. In the awkward silence that followed, Sita stared straight ahead at the sea. Two catamarans with dark patched sails stood motionless in the distance. Alice stole a surreptitious look in the direction of her mother. Sita had wanted a boy named Ravi but, because it had been a girl, they would have called her Rachel after the child in the film, Hand in Hand. Alice swallowed.
‘Did it hurt?’ she asked eventually.
Without warning her mother began to cry, a thin long howl followed by great choking sobs. Her sari was coming undone. Alice stared at her in dismay, wishing she hadn’t spoken.
‘Mama,’ she said uncertainly, looking around for her grandmother, wishing Janake would come over as he had promised. Sita looked frightening and unfamiliar. Her body was its old shape with her stomach almost flat again. She began to speak in a high, strange voice that wobbled on the edge of hysteria. Panic-stricken, Alice called her grandmother.
‘I thought my legs were being pulled apart,’ Sita was saying through a storm of tears. ‘And then my stomach collapsed. They didn’t let me see her, they didn’t want me to!’
She wrung her hands and her face twisted with the effort of trying to speak while she cried.
‘We have to leave this place, Alice. We must go far away from these murderers. We must go to England. Your dada is leaving first, but we must follow.’
Alice stood rooted to the spot. Her mother looked like one of the puppets she had seen at the fair. Her grandparents, coming in just then, moved swiftly.
‘Come, come, Sita, don’t upset yourself and Alice with talk like that. Let’s take you into the bedroom.’
‘Give your mother a kiss, Alice,’ Bee said calmly, ‘and then she must rest. After that I want you to come with me; there’s something I have for you. I’ve been waiting for the right moment.’
They stepped out into the hot afternoon, and turned towards his studio, a small shadow walking close to a larger one. Her bicycle was leaning against the mango tree exactly where they had left it. Seeing it, Bee stopped and sighed.
‘Child…’ he said.
And then he shook his head.
‘Can I ride my bicycle?’ Alice asked, stalling for time uneasily.
Her grandfather was beginning to sound frightening too. Whatever it was he was about to say, she did not want to hear. Bee nodded absent-mindedly. She wanted him to be angry with the government or her father. She wanted him to look fierce, but all Bee did was continue to stare at the sea. She sensed that Shockwaves were going through him. At last he took a deep breath.
Alice,’ he said, and to her relief he sounded stern. ‘There are certain things you need to know.’
She froze. He knew! She had wished the baby dead and he was going to hand her in to the police. Bee was looking at her. The heaviness that she had been carrying around for days shifted and the sun on her neck was as warm and comforting as a hand. Mango scents from the tree pressed against her. It was such an ordinary day. On the dry parched ground a yellow-spotted gecko moved haltingly, back and forth. Alice watched it until it disappeared under the debris of fallen leaves and then her grandfather’s voice was suddenly very clear and steady in the pause.
‘It is not the end of the world, you know,’ he was saying lightly, as though he was talking to himself. And it isn’t for almost four months.’
‘What?’ she asked, startled.
‘Huh?’ he said gruffly. ‘What d’you think? That you won’t come back, huh?’
When she looked up, he appeared to be laughing, with all but his eyes.
‘It won’t be forever. When this trouble stops, you’ll come back, you know that! Just you wait and see. I shall be right here, waiting for you. Now come, Putha, I want to show you what I’ve been saving for you.’
Are we going to England?’
Bee nodded. His lips were pressed firmly together. They crossed to the back of the house where he had spent his life battling with the wind and the monsoons to create his garden. Most of the plants he grew were in containers he had stolen from the kitchen, much to the annoyance of the cook, who was always complaining to Kamala. Bee never took any notice. Going over to the old cupboard that lived outside his studio beside the murunga tree, he searched inside and handed Alice a small box with drawers attached. When she opened it each compartment held all the seeds he had collected from his garden.
‘See, child, there’s a whole garden here, waiting. I’ve been saving all of them for you. See, here’s a forest sleeping in your hand!’
It was obvious he had been preparing for this for some time, that in fact he had always guessed they would leave one day.
‘So you can take my garden with you wherever you go,’ he told her firmly. ‘And you must grow the plants just as I’ve shown you. Hmm?’
She nodded, silenced. The shadows lying in wait on the edge of her bright looking-glass world jostled with each other, inching a little closer. Certainty was seeping into her like sea water from a hole dug on the beach. Alice stared dumbly. A confusion of thoughts swam in her head. The view of the sea, the yellow-spotted gecko now darting across a branch of the murunga tree, and her grandfather, all the well-loved sights of the slowly baking afternoon became as insubstantial as a mirage. Again her heart flexed with sadness and a faint sense of premonition brushed against her. The rush of the sea was faint as though from a shell held to her ear. Blinking, she observed her grandfather in the mottled shade of the tree.
And there’s something else I want to tell you,’ he was saying, ignoring the look on her face, frowning at her. ‘Having certain thoughts about things won’t make them happen. We all have those sorts of thoughts. Sometimes we have to think them in order to see what we feel, d’you understand?’
Alice nodded as the vomity thoughts moved up her throat. And then subsided back into her stomach. She felt like the blocked gully at the back of the garden. Sometimes the servant poked it with a stick and the dirty water went away. But a blocked gully, the servant had said, was always a blocked gully. You never knew when it might overflow. Her grandfather was looking at her closely, so she carefully put her don’t-care face on. Bee wasn’t easily fooled. She needed to be careful.
‘We all have thoughts, Alice,’ he repeated softly. ‘Understand?’
Again she nodded. Luckily her grandfather had turned and was looking far out to sea again.
‘She should have been allowed to see the baby,’ he murmured. ‘What you don’t see stays in your mind longer. It haunts you. D’you understand?’
Alice waited. It occurred to her that this was another way in which she was changing. Because I’m nine, she decided, I don’t get impatient any more. I’ve learned to wait. She
knew that her dark secret about the baby was inside the gully. Out of sight for the moment, at least.
‘This will always be here,’ Bee said, pointing to the view and the garden. ‘Waiting for you to return.’
He spoke fiercely.
‘You know that I will never, never leave you.’
Then his face cleared.
‘I’ll take you for the cycle ride later, after I do a bit of work,’ he said in a different voice. ‘And you can look for Janake.’
But later things got worse. Three weeks was not long in the cycle of recovery. Sita was in a terrible state. Her breasts still leaked milk and she had been warned that the tear in her uterus would take months to heal. Walking was painful because of the stitches and despite constant sedation she slept only fitfully. In the end they moved her bed into her sister’s bedroom so May could talk to her whenever she woke. What frightened Alice the most was that her mother could stay silent for only so long before she began her story again. The family doctor came to call. He had been a friend of the Fonsekas for as long as they could remember. He had delivered both Sita and May. Now he came to examine Sita, to check her wound was healing and to change the dressing. He came just when the four o’clock flowers were closing. Alice tried filling her head with the sound of the sea in order to blot out her mother’s cries. After the doctor had left, Bee called Alice and she wheeled her bicycle over the level crossing towards the beach. They walked without speaking, pausing only at the kade for Bee to buy some tobacco. When she had been younger, Alice used to love to stand at the level crossing watching the express as it roared towards Colombo. Tonight they were late and the train had already gone and the beach when they reached it was empty, scribbled all over with small sand worms. Two enormous gulls walked sedately in front of them, managing to keep a fraction of an inch away from the waterline.
‘I’m going to sit on this rock,’ Bee told her, ‘and draw the view and smoke my pipe. Why don’t you see if Janake is around by the huts?’
He had not told Alice, but he had begun to draw her. The drawings were to be his talisman against the coming departure. The sun had not set and the light had a curious candescence. It hung over the sea uncannily as Alice rode in a wobbling line towards the huts. Janake, when he wasn’t out with the fishermen, helped his stepfather to collect coconuts. Today, to her delight, he was still on the beach chopping firewood. She stood watching him for a moment. He was as much a part of this place as she was, so constantly present in her life that she had hardly noticed him until now. The savoury smell of cooking drifted from one of the fishermen’s huts making her mouth water. Janake, stripped to the waist, raised his arm high in the air before bringing it down on to the log. The way the axe struck the wood looked easy, but Janake was sweating. There was a slowly growing pile of wood nearby. Turning, he saw Alice and addressed her in Singhalese.
‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Why does the tree smell of perfume?’ she asked.
‘It’s a special tree,’ Janake said. ‘It can cure many things.’
He smiled a flash of very white teeth. Then he told Alice the townsmen had finally given his mother permission to chop down the tree. They had needed the permission because of the tree’s medicinal properties. Early this morning the tree men had come and taken the tree down and now his mother wanted him to saw these parts up. Some for firewood and a piece to make a table.
‘I’ve been doing this all day,’ he said. And waiting for you. How is your amma?’
Alice picked up a small chip and smelled it.
‘That’s a medicinal smell,’ Janake told her. ‘The herbal doctors will pound it up and make it into a poultice.’
‘Shall I take some for my mother?’
‘If you like. Ask the cook to grind it for her. Is she bad?’
Alice nodded. She was reluctant to tell Janake how bad her mother was, or that she didn’t want to look at her face. He was a boy who would stop a bus on the road if there were a tortoise crossing. How could she tell him she had caused a death? She frowned. Janake was absorbed in stacking the wood into piles.
‘Can we go to the sand dunes?’ she asked.
‘Okay,’ Janake said without looking up. ‘Wait a minute till I finish this. We can walk to the next bay. You might find things for your collection.’
He was right. They found some old driftwood with paint on it and a piece of blue fishing net.
‘It must have come from one of the catamarans,’ Janake said, examining it.
The wood revealed two colours, one underneath the other. Aquamarine over-painted by cobalt blue. It was scratched and peeling, still damp from the water. The evening stopping train passed slowly by. It was half empty. Glancing up, Alice saw a woman with bright red lipstick eating a samosa. When the train slowed down at the level crossing a man in a white shirt leaned out of an open window and watched them. He smiled and waved at Janake. Alice had a feeling she had seen him before. Then she remembered that he had come to her grandparent’s house during the riots one Singhalese New Year. He had slept in her grandfather’s studio for a few days. He had looked very frightened at the time and then he had gone away. The train began to move off and the man waved at them both.
‘That’s my uncle Kunal,’ Janake said as the train gathered speed. ‘D’you remember him? I was visiting him the week you had your birthday.’
‘Does he live with your aunt then?’
‘She’s not my real aunt,’ Janake said and then he gave a shout. Half buried in the sand was a beautiful piece of wood. He began pulling it out.
‘Oh, can I have it, please, Janake,’ Alice cried excitedly.
‘I’m getting it for you, wait! Don’t pull it, you’ll break it.’
‘Oh! Look!’
‘What are you going to make with it?’ Janake asked curiously. Alice shook her head. She couldn’t say, but she wanted to take it home anyway.
That night, when the household were finally in bed and Sita turned restlessly in her dreams, Bee told Kamala about Alice’s afternoon of foraging.
‘My studio is full of her finds,’ he said with admiration. ‘She’s going to be a maker of things when she is older.’
It was only to Kamala, and under cover of darkness, that he dropped his guard.
‘It’s as if…‘ he paused, ‘the only way she can make sense of what she’s leaving behind is through these random finds. They are her way of finding direction.’
Kamala was silent. What could the child possibly store up? How could she make any sense of what she was losing when she had hardly begun to understand what this place was about?
‘She knows,’ Bee told her stubbornly. ‘She’s no fool, she has her instincts. She knows what matters. And in any case, it won’t be knowledge needed by her for years.’
On their return from the beach Alice, asking him for some glue, had started to make a small construction. Bee had hidden his amazement.
‘Has it sunk in, then?’ Kamala asked. ‘That she will be going.’
How could it have sunk in when even she could not comprehend any of it?
‘What’s all the fuss about? She’ll be back, you’ll see. In no time at all,’ Bee said roughly.
Oh yes, thought Kamala, then why are you so upset? The crescent moon appeared from behind a cloud. The same moon that would shine in England. We will have the moon as connection, Bee told himself, firmly.
‘Dias thinks we should get her to talk about Sita and the baby,’ Kamala told him hesitatingly.
‘Why can’t that woman keep her mouth shut?’ Bee asked irritably. He moved restlessly. ‘I don’t want her trying her hand at British psychology on this family.’
In spite of her sadness, Kamala wanted to laugh. Bee had no idea how he sounded.
‘When she feels the need to, Alice will talk,’ he declared. ‘At the moment all she needs is for us to stay as we’ve always been. There’ll be time enough for change in her life.’
The clock in the hall str
uck the hour. Outside beyond the trees the sea barely moved. Someone had ironed out the waves. In the distance they could hear the faint wail of police sirens. Tonight the sounds were coming from the direction of the town. This is how it begins, thought Bee, his mood changing swiftly. We are the witnesses of the start but who knows what it will lead to. Yesterday a drunken Singhalese doctor was careless with a Tamil life. Tomorrow will be different again. And what will happen when the Tamils retaliate? What then? In the darkness, Kamala reached for his hand.
‘Children work these things out through their play,’ she agreed, knowing it was her reassurance that he really wanted.
‘She won’t be a child for so very long. The journey…’ he stopped.
When it came down to it, a life without her was unthinkable.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Kamala said, not believing it, frightened too. And anyway, before all of that there’s the wedding.’
They lay side by side, turning over their thoughts, discussing May and her forthcoming wedding which would now have to be postponed, at least until Sita could cope better. May, the easy child, always happy, always laughing thought Kamala. She still laughed. She had been born blessed, with the knack of making her life easy. And now she had picked a loving man. Since the stillbirth, knowing how upset May was, Namil had taken to visiting her every single evening.
‘When is Stanley coming?’ Kamala asked softly, knowing she was on dangerous ground.
Although Stanley had rung most nights to speak first to his daughter and then his wife, he had not left Colombo since the funeral.
‘I don’t care if I never see the man again,’ Bee said. ‘I’m sick of the way he thinks he’s a white sootha.’
He knew he was being unfair, but Bee no longer cared. Stanley did not interest him.
‘I suppose he’s busy at the moment,’ Kamala said placatingly ‘Sita says he has to work overtime at his office in order not to take a cut in his last pay cheque.’