by Roma Tearne
His smile was wry. The look on his face was unreadable.
‘I’ve been teaching a very long time, Alice, I’ve seen many, many students…’
Still she made no move to leave. The door opened and a boy put his head around the door.
‘Sir, can we come in?’
‘Get out, Joe,’ the teacher bellowed. ‘And remember to knock and WAIT!’
Alice stood up.
‘Okay?’ Mr Eliot asked, turning to Alice with a completely different voice. ‘You’ll come back after school?’
Yes,’ she said faintly, tremulously, catching at his heart.
And remember what I said. One day you will be a really good artist! Hold on to that, will you?’
She nodded wanly and left.
And one day,’ murmured David Eliot softly, ‘you will be beautiful too.’
She waited impatiently for the end of the day, wanting simply to see him again. But when she walked into the art room after the last bell it was Miss Kimberley who was there.
Yes, what is it? It’s Alice, isn’t it?’
Alice nodded.
‘It’s okay, Kim,’ David Eliot said easily, coming in. ‘She’s seeing me. Come on into my office, Alice.’
Aware of hostility Alice hesitated.
‘What’s the matter?’ David Eliot asked, seeing her wariness, adding, before she could say anything, ‘Oh, just ignore her! I’m going to have a cup of tea. Want one?’
Alice smiled and he considered her.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you smile.’
At that her eyes filled with tears again.
‘Listen to me, Alice. How long have I known you now? Since first year?’
She nodded.
‘Well then. You come in here most days and work on your constructions, and right from the beginning I saw there was something, very…I dunno,’ he shrugged. ‘Poetic, I suppose,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘That’s it. You don’t often see that in the daily shit that’s given to you here, believe me!’
A faint smile crossed her face; a small dimple appeared in her cheek.
‘So, listen to me,’ the teacher continued, in a voice that made her want to cry once more. ‘I know there’s all sorts of things in your life feeding into your work.’
She looked at the ground, motionless, long eyelashes sweeping downwards. She could hardly bear the tone of his voice. She had not heard such tenderness for a long time.
‘And that’s great, you know. That’s the stuff that will make the work terrific,’ he was saying. ‘The best thing about teaching is when, once in a while, you find an interesting student. So talk to me about your grandfather.’
Later, after he had shooed her out into the cold slushy playground, she watched him walk towards his car wondering where he was going, seeing the man who was her teacher in a different light. The sky was a hard fluorescent expanse, empty of any cloud. Her mother would be wondering where she was. It was so cold that there would be snow again, quite soon. Uncertain, exhausted with weeping on and off all day, she headed for home, her mind filled with lightness at the memory of the art teacher’s voice.
By the time she was able to even contemplate writing the letter, the double cremation was over, the alms had been distributed, and the Sea House had been closed and boarded up. Time had arrived to lie heavily like an animal on May’s hands. It was the school holidays and she did not even have her work to distract her. Putting aside old grievances, she wrote to her sister and her niece. When Sita opened the envelope, miraculously untampered, two photographs would fall out. Black-and-white images from a happier past. The photographs were blurred, but even so, thought May, her eyes swimming with tears, it was possible to distinguish Bee, standing under the murunga tree with the six-year-old Alice. Their father in his striped sarong, puffing his pipe, and Alice in the yellow cotton dress with the two ducks embroidered by Kamala. A wash of innocent memories spread before her.
By the time you get this all that remains of our parents will be ashes, May wrote. I am in no mood for writing, but I must set down the events as they occur in case I forget. It will not be possible for you to imagine unless I do this. In any event, it will be almost impossible for you to believe what is going on here. They killed them both. You know how long Thatha had been under threat. So when it finally happened, why was I so shocked? And why did they pick this moment? Perhaps it was the etching he sold to the Tamil journalist. Did you know that his pictures were used in the Asian Herald published in Chennai? Namil and I had not been aware of this. How foolish he was. How brave. And then Amma. What had she ever done in her life that warranted this? Namil thinks she might have been killed after him, because she would have been a witness. Would we too have been mown down if we had been in the house? Let me tell you how it was. Dias found them. Can you imagine? Dias had come home, after being away in Colombo for so long, to clear her home. She and Esther are going to Canada. I don’t know if they keep in touch with you, if you know what their story is. Did you know that someone in the army raped Esther? She might have AIDS; they are waiting for the test results. Dais’s relatives have got them a visa for Canada and they are going in a month. They were both present at the funeral. The turn-out was huge. Father might have had enemies, but he also had many, many friends. Even the local policeman was present. He was so shocked, poor man; he was in tears. And the station master—do you remember him?—he came too. And then, at the last minute, of course, the army came; they told us it was to make sure there was no trouble for us. Can you believe it! Of course they have denied that they had anything to do with the murders. And of course they will get away with it. The news will be whitewashed, or the Tamils blamed, or, what is more likely, it will simply be forgotten.
You may be wondering how I can write in such an unemotional way. Why am I not more hysterical? The truth is, I am numb. In the past two weeks I have cried myself to a place from which I shall never again return. You might say I have lost all my illusions. Sita, you are my only sister. In the past we have not always seen eye to eye. I have grown used to saying nothing, but I think you knew I disapproved of many of the things you did. But I must tell you that the best thing you ever did was to leave this terrible place with Alice. When you left, I resented you going so much. I used to think, why is she leaving this sinking ship, why is she abandoning us to Hell? Don’t we matter? ‘I used to feel that Father preferred you to me. And then I would complain to Amma. Did you know that? When you married Stanley, father was devastated. And again, after Alice left, he changed completely. The grief was too much for him, and I resented that too. What about Sarath? I wanted to ask. Don’t you love him? Is Alice all that matters? Even if she no longer bothers to write home? There, I have said it, I have removed the poison that has lain in my heart for so long. I am trying to be as honest as I can with you.
Sis, Sita, I want to start again. We have grown apart. Alice too has become lost to us. It is too late for father and Amma, but let it not be too late for us. This is the real reason for my writing now. When I heard your voice on the telephone, when we rang you with the news, I longed to see you again. I longed for Sarath to know you. Alice is his only cousin; they should know each other. Please write back; please tell me what you are thinking. There is too much hatred living in this place already, the world has gone mad. Let’s not add to it.
It was Sarath who spoke at his grandparents’ funeral. You should have heard him. I thought my heart would burst. He spoke of them both, saying how much he loved them and how they had wanted the war to stop. Oh, I can’t remember what he said. He’s only a little boy, Sita. But already I see Father in him. Father, and a bit of you, too! He keeps telling us that he wants to become a doctor, did you know? All that has happened has affected him and, small as he is, he wants to do something about it. I only hope to God his own karma is good. Namil says it is his generation that will change things. Sita, I must stop writing now. I am very tired and Sarath will be home from school soon. I have had this term off from my teachi
ng because I just can’t concentrate for very long. Please write back, don’t let’s lose touch again. I want to know everything. Tell me how you are coping without Stanley. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything when you told me on the phone. I was in such shock over the news of what had happened here. But oh, Sis! Why didn’t you tell us before? Did you think we would judge you? Tell me about Alice. Tell me what she’s like, how she has changed, what her interests are. I hope your lives are going better than ours. One last thing, do you remember a boy called Janake? Alice would remember him, I’m sure, they used to play together on the beach. Well he is a young Buddhist priest now and he conducted the ceremony. He is a very gentle, peaceful person, all that a Buddhist monk should be. He was asking about you all and how Alice was doing. Ask Alice if she remembers him.
Our love to you both,
Your loving sister,
May
When she had finished reading the letter, Sita folded it back along the creases it had come with. She tucked the photographs inside the envelope and resealed it. Then she put it on the mantelpiece for Alice to see when she came home that night. And taking up her scissors she began her work. She had three pairs of trousers to alter before five o’clock. May’s reply would have to wait.
Purgatorio
12
WITH THE BEGINNING OF THE RAINS, the steamy, oppressive heat and the spiders that curled in fistfuls of rigor mortis below the ceilings, an immense inertia took hold of the Sea House. Nothing could shift the humidity, the acidic smell of sea heat, which crept in through the boarded-up windows and the cracks in the doors. Their lives stilled like a painting. In this neglect, everyday objects, no longer in daily use, edged towards their own extinction. A table worn by years of constant use, useless now. A chair, its cane disgorged in upward movement like tufts of sea grass on the beach, empty of any human shape. There was no one to say who might have occupied it once, no one to blow away the fine sea dust that had crept in with the storms. Sunlight slithered in whatever slit it could find. But it was the moon, heavily pregnant with religious fullness, that lit the house where they had once all lived together. Shining on the leaves of the paw-paw tree that drifted in through the front door. Revealing the painting that had buckled with the damp. When the full moon shone a whole terrible history seeped out of fabric and wood, exposing un-erasable marks and stains on objects that had finished one life of plenitude and were moving into another of decay.
After a year had passed May returned, following the ghostly path trodden by her parents. She wandered the house and took away their wedding photograph in shocked silence. The photograph, fixed in innocent smiles, gave nothing away. It haunted May. How could she have known what effect this image would have on her one day? Her parents, not yet her parents when it was taken. A butterfly, sulphur yellow and enormous, drifted in through the window and settled briefly on her hair. Fearing madness, she fled. The landscape had an air of menace. I’ll come back another day, she told herself, rage and grief overwhelming her yet again. But then she fled. When she was stronger, when many more months had passed, she crept slowly back to collect a few more things. A tea service, an embroidered jacket. Her books from the days of the Girls’ High School. A rice-paper edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, the prize her father had won forty years before. A copy of the Bible. What made them own a Bible? Karma lay scattered everywhere, issuing its warning. It appalled May afresh. The violence of their death was stronger than the smell of the sea. It was stronger than the sunlight that dried the house up, turning it into a shrivelled skeleton. It was too much for May, who vowed never to return. She forgot the pair of shoes belonging to her mother tucked under the bed. She forgot her father’s pipe, still with the toothmarks from when he chewed it. These things were left. Someone else in the future would have to rescue them.
Namil came and dismantled the studio. He sold the etching press and took whatever had not been already been destroyed by marauding thugs. He took what paints remained, encrusted and useless. He took a pot of brushes bearing traces of colour. There were no etching plates. Unknown hands had destroyed them. Then, tucked away behind a shelf, Namil found something else. It was a small painting made a short time before Alice had left.
‘We should send it,’ Namil suggested tentatively, wiping the dust off its surface. ‘One day it might mean something to her.’
The painting was of the sea, viewed from what had been Alice’s bedroom window. Time had not changed the view. However many years passed, it would not alter the blueness of the ocean, and Namil hoped the painting would move his niece.
‘It is not her fault,’ he consoled May, referring to the continued silence from overseas. ‘Be patient.’
But even though they waited hopefully, nothing happened. The old doctor who had lived behind the coconut grove had gone. On the night of the Sea House murders, a van had come for him. His manservant told May how the men had bundled the doctor into the van. As it drove off, the manservant heard the doctor cry out with pain. He was not seen again. A new doctor, a younger Singhalese man, had replaced him. Time passed. Like the sea and the sky and the shoreline, the days and months blended together. The mango tree in the front garden bore fruit. Small boys from the fishermen’s huts, seeing the house was empty, stole the fruit. Small girls, finding the dried mango stones, played hopscotch with them. No one cut back the undergrowth and the orange-blossom tree soon overshadowed the verandah, choking it of light. Nature entered the house, bleaching it, camouflaging it, making it its own. In Colombo and in other parts of the country the war continued regardless, appearing in small deadly pockets, creating craters of despair. The airport was destroyed. Suicide was the new destroyer, dropping its human remains as bombs everywhere. The cries of death were no longer distinguishable from the cries of birth. And while the world turned a blind eye and paradise blinded itself, the rich continued to travel home each night in armour-plated cars.
Alice saw him crossing the road before he even noticed her. He had a bottle of milk in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She knew he was hurrying to get back before she arrived at his flat. A bright August sun shone through the plane trees as she walked past the park and towards the block of Victorian flats where he lived. She was carrying a small portfolio.
‘Alice,’ he called, seeing her suddenly, waving the milk bottle. ‘I’m here!’
She turned and stopped, waiting for him solemnly. Ever since the dreadful day of her grandparents’ murder David Eliot had become her friend. He had seen her through two exams and a successful place on the foundation course at Camberwell. In the following July, after she finally left school, he’d invited her for the first time to his flat. She had been back several times since then, treasuring each visit. His flat, like his art department, was chaotic. She had never seen anything like it, except perhaps her grandfather’s studio. There were posters on the walls, shelves rising to the ceiling, filled with books, photographs, plants and of course ashtrays full to the brim. She had discovered that, in the privacy of his house, David Eliot smoked a pipe. And although the smell of the tobacco he used was different, still the sound of him puffing on it filled her with contentment.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, closing the door.
She spread out the contents of her portfolio on his kitchen table. Sketchbooks, drawings, some paintings.
‘What’s this about?’ he asked.
‘I’m clearing up,’ she said, smiling, unaware how changed he found her since the first time he had noticed her. ‘And I found this—’
She held out a small oil painting of sea and sky, not her usual style.
‘It’s for you,’ she said. ‘I found it last night. I think I did it after my grandfather died.’
He was looking at the painting and did not look up. When he did his eyes were unreadable.
‘I’ll buy it from you.’
‘No! No!’ she said in horror. ‘It’s a present!’
He frowned and moved away from her. For a moment she wondered if she ha
d offended him. He did not look pleased. She thought he was the most wonderful person in the world.
‘But if you don’t like it…’ she trailed off.
‘I shall sell it when you are famous,’ he said only half joking. ‘Thank you.’ He had told her many times that she was his best pupil. He would never have another like her again. All the others paled into insignificance, he often said. The difference is you actually have something to say, he had told her. She knew he was sorry to lose her but she was determined; she would always know him.
‘I wish you were teaching the foundation course,’ she said tentatively, sitting back on her heels, looking at the drawings in her portfolio.
There was a stale smell of cooking, and the rubbish he had once again forgotten to put out was everywhere, but she hardly noticed.
‘More coffee?’ he asked, his face helpless.
Misunderstanding, she looked at him anxiously.
‘Can I still come and see you when I start the course?’
For all that she was constantly visiting him, there wasn’t much they discussed that was personal. He did not encourage it and she did not want to be a nuisance. Which made the little she had told him about her life all the more precious. She fixed her eyes, beautiful and compelling, worriedly on him.
‘Well, it’ll cost you!’ he said, lighting another cigarette.
‘You smoke too much,’ she told him bossily, adding, ‘I can’t manage the foundation if I don’t keep seeing you!’
She almost bit her tongue, but he was still smiling, if a little ironically.
‘Oh, I don’t think so. You’re your own person now, you’ll see.’
Again the flippant tone she did not fully understand. August stretched luxuriously ahead.
‘My mother works through the summer,’ she told him. ‘We need the money, sir.’