by Roma Tearne
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, call me David,’ he replied impatiently.
Her father, she confessed, sent most of his money to the Tamil cause in Jaffna and there wasn’t much left over for them. Besides, her father had another life now with a new woman. David Eliot listened without commenting. She had no idea if he secretly disapproved of her family. Once, during this long, wonderful August, he had taken her to a West End gallery to see the work of an artist he admired. She had stood for a long time staring dreamily at a painting called Say Good-bye to the Shores of Africa. On another occasion he took her to the Hayward Gallery and talked to her about a sculptress who was very old. Whenever he talked to her about art he was deadly serious. She loved listening to him talk in this way. Always he brought the subject around to her own work. Then, a few days before the bank holiday as a belated eighteenth birthday present he took her to a small restaurant he frequented in Goodge Street and gave her a first sip of wine, laughing when she wrinkled up her nose at the taste. He ordered lasagne and listened to the story of the first time she tasted pasta on board the ship that had brought her to England, and how she had for years hated the smell of tomato sauce because it reminded her of leaving her home. He had listened intently to her story. He always gave her his full attention when she spoke. Then he had asked her, hesitatingly, if she would ever want to go back.
‘There’s no point,’ she told him. ‘I have all of it in my head.’
‘You should do more paintings from your head,’ he said now, looking at the oil she had given him.
He began to cough suddenly and she stood up.
‘Shall I get you some water?’
He didn’t answer. When the coughing stopped he reached for his cigarettes again. Then he waved his hand towards the door.
‘Time you went,’ he said, with a small grimace.
Unknown to anyone, Janake had taken to visiting the Sea House. Memories propelled him towards it, pity kept him silent. Every time he returned from Colombo, on his way back from the station he would stop off to visit his elderly mother. He loved to listen to the sounds in the house, the murmuring and whispering that went on in it; like a shell echoing the waves. There was no one but Janake to listen to these unresolved voices. Alice, they called, Alice! Ordinarily the house would have been sold, ordinarily another family would have moved in. But these were not ordinary times and May and Namil were too crushed, too frightened, too traumatised to bother with the house. So it remained, sighing and whispering its tale of neglect. The death stains had all gone, washed away by wind and rain, veiled in dust, suppressed by time. The house stood eyeless and terrible. And the mango tree fruited and the coconuts fell to the ground and the frangipani blossomed under the blistering tropical sky. It was how this time passed, with slow indifference, with Janake as its only witness.
At eight Sarath already acted much older than his age. He still wanted to attend medical school. His parents said nothing. After what had happened, all that interested them was Sarath’s safety. They had not heard from Sita for a long time; years. After May’s last letter there had been silence for several months and when finally the longed-for reply came, it was cold and unsatisfactory, a mere formality that had hurt May more than she could say.
‘She has become a white woman,’ May told Namil, after reading it. ‘She doesn’t want to know about us, now.’
Namil had been more optimistic.
‘Be patient,’ he said. ‘Your sister has had a hell of a life.’
May had cried herself to sleep for many nights after that. Who would have thought the Fonseka family would end up this way?
Some months later, after one of his visits to the Sea House, Janake called round to see May. Janake was twenty two, but still small for his age. Sarath was nearly as tall as him.
‘How are things going for you, Janake?’ Namil asked gently.
‘All right, Uncle,’ Janake said with a shake of his head.
Always after his secret visits to the Sea House, Janake was full of sadness. Full of memories of Alice. They had never written to each other as they had promised. By the time Janake had been able to write in English, the moment for writing had passed.
‘There’s a slight chance,’ he said, and then he stopped.
He was thinking of the box Alice had given him on her last day. A box that would never open, she had laughed. And when he had asked her why this was she had told him she didn’t want the memories to be lost. Janake hesitated. He had always been aware that a rift existed between the remaining Fonsekas.
‘What sort of chance?’ Sarath was asking.
‘Well, it might not happen,’ Janake said a little reluctantly, ‘but next year I might go to the UK.’
‘What!’ May cried. ‘Oh, Janake, really? When next year?’
She looked shocked.
‘I don’t know, Aunty. It’s just talk at the moment. I have to finish my exams first.’
He wondered if they knew of his secret visits to the Sea House and if he could talk freely about Alice without angering them. He understood the hurt caused by Sita’s neglect. But did they blame Alice, too?
‘If I go, I shall want to see Alice,’ he said, thinking how much he would love that.
‘Bring some photos, if you do,’ Sarath said excitedly. ‘And ask them why they don’t write. I’m going to England one day, too,’ he said confidently. ‘Not yet,’ he added, catching sight of his mother’s face. ‘Not till I’m a doctor!’
Later that night when Janake had left and Sarath had finished his homework and gone to bed, May cleared up the remains of the evening meal. It was a Friday night. Janake’s news had conjured up ghosts. The past contained relatives she no longer recognised. Sita was not the sister she had known. What was lost, she told Namil with finality, would never be recovered. In the year since the murders she had found it impossible to shake off her depression. While her sister had vanished to a better life, bitterness continued to cling to May, no matter how hard she tried to remove it. Soon, she told Namil, they should visit the Sea House and tidy it up for the last time. The idea filled her with dread.
‘Perhaps we should sell the land,’ she said.
‘Go to sleep,’ Namil told her. ‘Stop thinking about the house. There’s time enough to sell it, when Sarath needs the money for university. You never know how things will work themselves out. Our karma can’t be bad forever.’
Outside in the moonless night, further up the bay, the Sea House stood silently, facing the ocean, in the way it had for a century. It watched the bay with its windowless eyes as though it were a living, breathing person. Filled with memories, waiting for a better future. And some memories were good and some were not, for the wheel of fortune was not easily stopped and the Sea House would have to take its chance just like the rest.
13
‘HOW’S YOUR MOTHER?’ STANLEY ASKED.
Alice nodded and helped herself to some mushroom curry. ‘Okay.’
‘Is she still working for that bloody dry cleaners?’
‘Mmm.’
And?’
Stanley frowned, exasperated. Alice continued eating and would not look at him. He poured himself another glass of beer and stared at this girl, his daughter. She had grown; not much in size, it was true, but nevertheless she had blossomed. Each time she visited the change surprised him. Even Rajah had noticed.
‘A proper Tamil beauty!’ Rajah had said admiringly, suddenly inclined to friendliness in the face of such a startling transformation. ‘The ugly duckling has become a swan! Any boyfriends, yet?’
Alice had not responded and Stanley had been annoyed at his brother’s tactlessness.
He was discovering within himself a belated and fierce protective-ness towards this unresponsive child. Surprised by it, of late he had begun to make overtures of affection towards her. Now that Alice had started at art school he tried to see her as much as he could, insisting she visited every Saturday. She came, without complaint, was always ravenous and mostly silent. He had
no idea what went on in her head.
‘Doesn’t your mother feed you?’ he asked, irritated, watching her help herself to some dhal.
‘I do most of the cooking.’
‘Why? What’s the matter with her? She can’t have that much work.’
‘I can cook very well.’
‘I’m sure you can, but I give her money to buy food for you!
‘She does…I do the shopping sometimes too. She doesn’t like going out, much.’
‘Why not?’ demanded Stanley.
‘Dad,’ Alice said, and then she stopped.
The look on her father’s face made her suddenly no longer hungry. She pushed back her plate. He still hates her, she thought. After all she’s been through, he still can’t say something nice about her. Alice sat very still until the feeling of pity for her mother died down.
‘She’s tired, Dada.’
How could she tell her father what her mother was really like? How to describe the fragile ghost that inhabited Sita’s body for so long? Had her father forgotten the woman who had walked up the hill so long ago without her baby in her arms? Anger overwhelmed Alice. Anger, and a sort of despair at her father for his constant criticism. Anger at herself too, for not understanding her mother sooner.
‘She’s cold all the time, Dada,’ she said instead, trying again.
Sita had never stopped complaining of the cold. She had never been able to adapt, never been able to wear Western clothes. Instead, she wore cardigans over her saris, thick socks on her feet and a headscarf tied on her head. For this reason as much as any other she had begun to hate going out. On those few occasions she was forced to do so, she took with her an old canvas tool bag which she used as a handbag. In it were her pins, her tape measure, her scissors. In spite of herself, Alice smiled. Nothing she said could persuade her mother to stop using the tool bag in this way. Quietly, with her head bent, wearing her heavy winter coat even in summer, Sita would venture timidly out. From a distance Alice always thought she looked like a broken doll. How could she make her father understand all this?
‘What d’you mean, she’s cold?’ Stanley demanded irritably. ‘Don’t you have electric heaters now? I told you to get rid of those paraffin heaters ages ago. They’re useless.’
‘We have.’
Stanley’s own, never-ending feelings of guilt made him angry at any mention of Sita. What about me? he wanted to ask Alice. Don’t you feel sorry for me, too? But he said nothing, frightened of alienating the girl further. Life had not worked according to plan. Manika had left him. Once a servant woman always a servant woman, he supposed. He didn’t miss her. The indoor shrines, the incense, the saffron washed offering were a bit much, here, amidst the London grime. His brother had disapproved.
‘Filthy sex,’ Rajah had called the infatuation, and Alice had kept away too. Surprisingly it was the child’s absence that had bothered Stanley most of all. Anyway, it was over; Stanley lived alone now, with the occasional visitor that no one knew about. Now all his energy was taken up by the Tamil cause, back home. Not many people knew about that either.
‘Neville’s coming over this afternoon,’ he told Alice. ‘Do you remember Neville?’
Alice shook her head.
‘No, I suppose you were too small. He was a friend of mine in Colombo. He was the person who got our tickets to come to England. We owe him a lot.’
‘Can I have a glass of orange?’ Alice asked.
‘You must have been at the Sea House whenever he visited us.’
An image of the blue-painted gate and the dappled sunlight on the ground flashed by. She saw a piece of sea glass on the dusty shelf in her bedroom. The servant was polishing the floor with white coconut scrapings. She used to slide on the floor behind the servant. Laughing.
‘Anyway, he’s come to England. He does a lot of very good work for the Tigers. We all must help. These are our people. Your people, too, don’t forget.’
In her mind’s eye a lizard darted across the path and up on to the jak-fruit tree. In the light its skin was wrinkled like an old dinosaur. Old, like the land. Lime flowers dropped on the ground.
‘You’re Tamil too, Alice. You mustn’t forget the suffering of your people,’ Stanley urged, finishing his beer.
Only half, she thought, helping herself to orange juice. It was getting late, she told her father, she had to get back. There was a piece of work she had to finish for tomorrow.
‘I saw someone called Neville,’ she told her mother, when she returned. ‘He knows you.’
But her mother didn’t remember Neville either and Alice refrained from telling her that she had been made uncomfortable at the way Neville stared at her. She was in her first term at art school, living at home, partly for financial reasons but also because she did not like the idea of her mother being alone. It was something they never discussed. The slow changes on Sita’s once lovely face, wrought by time and middle age, were painful for her daughter to bear. Aware also that, although she said nothing, Sita was secretly pleased to have her still living at home, Alice began to take over the day-to-day problems that arose in the house, the shopping and, increasingly, the cooking. Sita, claiming to be busy, continued her alterations, but Alice knew her mother had come to rely on her. It suited them both, this negotiating of the same space without friction. Outwardly, it was easy to pretend nothing had changed.
‘I’m going to see Mr Eliot tomorrow,’ she told her mother. ‘I want to show him my new work.’
‘Can you change my library books?’ Sita asked before going back to the programme she was watching on television.
The next morning Alice caught a bus and went over to David Eliot’s flat. She hadn’t seen him for some weeks because of her workload. It was still David Eliot who Alice showed her work to first; it was his judgement she valued the most. Today she carried with her two parts of a new construction she was making, some photographs and a few drawings. As she let herself into the main entrance of his block of flats she caught sight of Sarah Kimberley walking down the stairs. Alice hesitated. She had a feeling that Miss Kimberley still disliked her.
‘You going up there, again?’ the woman asked.
Alice nodded.
‘He knows I’m coming. I haven’t seen him for two weeks.’
Somehow Sarah Kimberley made her feel guilty.
‘Well, you do know he’s not well?’
Alarmed, Alice shook her head.
‘He should be resting.’
‘He said it was okay to come over.’
Sarah narrowed her eyes slightly. She hesitated for a moment. ‘Look, could I have a word with you?’ she asked, lowering her voice, and before Alice could reply she found herself on the way back down the stairs. ‘Let’s go outside, shall we?’
Outside, the older woman whisked Alice to a café and bought them both a cup of tea.
‘There’s something you should know,’ she said, not unkindly. ‘You’re obviously not aware, but David and I plan to get married.’
Alice stared at her.
‘You had no idea, did you? He said nothing?’
Still Alice remained silent. Sarah laughed. The laugh sounded like a series of gunshots.
‘He’s hopeless,’ she said lightly.
She paused for a fraction of a second. Then she sighed heavily.
‘Now listen, Alice. This may sound harsh, but you are just one of the many ex-pupils that Mr Eliot has ringing him up, pestering him and…‘ her voice tailed off and she gave another laugh.
This time the laugh was more embarrassed than angry. Alice continued to stare at the woman.
And while I don’t mind you visiting him now and again, I would appreciate it if you didn’t come over quite so often.’
She smiled, showing a fleck of lipstick on one of her teeth. Alice was mortified. Something heavy lodged in her throat.
Yes,’ she said faintly, feeling her eyes prick with tears.
She looked away and then she stood up quickly. All she wanted to
do was flee from this woman as fast as she could, get out of the café, bolt home.
‘I hope I haven’t upset you,’ Sarah was saying.
Alice shook her head. Her hair had fallen over her eyes.
‘Was there something in particular you wanted to ask him, just now?’
‘No, I…tell him I hope he gets better, and perhaps I’ll come over at the end of term.’
‘Of course,’ murmured Sarah Kimberley, looking at her hands.
She did not go back to see David Eliot that term. And she hardly did any work either. Art school was proving problematic without him to talk to. Her intense sense of privacy meant she hated the communal nature of the studios. Not surprisingly, the students living in rented accommodation around London had bonded together early on, enjoying a social life while Alice simply went home at the end of each day. For the first time she began to wish she had made more of an effort to make friends, but it was too late. She saw she had alienated herself. At the end of the spring term, during the vacation, she helped Sita take in extra sewing. She was still only nineteen. Making an effort, she went to a few exhibitions and even on one occasion to the theatre. She did all this alone, never venturing near David Eliot’s flat. The vacation drew to a close. Sita was getting more and more absent-minded. She left the iron on and burnt a dress, she forgot to switch the television off, she lost her purse in the street.
‘Mama, what’s wrong with you?’ Alice asked her, exasperated. ‘You’re working too hard. I think you should take a holiday.’
But they both knew Sita would never do that. By 1984 Sri Lanka, as it was now called, was in the throes of a long and senseless war, the brutality of which was hardly noticed in the West. Other wars, more important ones, in larger, richer countries, hit the headlines. Occasionally, if something was mentioned on the Six O’clock News, Sita turned the television off. If she closed her eyes she knew she could blot the country out. In June the weather became suddenly lovely and the students in Alice’s year decamped to the park in Camberwell. It was a time of parties and end-of-year shows, of champagne and ebullience. Soon they began to help clean the studios of all the winter rubbish in preparation for the degree show. A skip appeared and began filling up. Bit by bit, paintings that had never been seen before began appearing and were hung on the newly painted studio walls. The students from Alice’s year helped the third-year finalists as labels were printed, floors scrubbed and invitations sent out. Summer light flooded the spaces and the smell of turps and oil was now mixed with bleach. Alice did whatever was asked of her willingly enough, but she disappeared as soon as any social gathering was planned. Then, just before the end of term, she decided to attempt one last visit to her old teacher’s flat. Sarah Kimberley’s warning off had brought out in Alice one of her uncharacteristic flashes of anger that, try as she might, she could not control. She was amazed by the strength of it, for the truth was she desperately wanted to see David Eliot once more. But when she got there the flat was closed up and a neighbour told her he had been taken ill.