by Roma Tearne
Tim cooked their meals. Alice, up all night with the screaming Ravi, was exhausted. He cooked two sorts of meals. One where he emptied piles of spices into the chicken curry, and a second meal with mashed potatoes and cheddar cheese, for himself. They coped somehow and every morning, with more than a little relief, Tim escaped to work. The Health Visitor soon got the picture.
‘It’s your grandpa, luv, isn’t it?’ she asked, gently helping Alice clamp the baby’s pink mouth on the nipple.
Breast is best, she told the girl, thinking what a pity it was that these girls looked so lovely just when they felt so exhausted. Nature is full of wastage, the Health Visitor thought privately. And she didn’t like the husband either. The baby waved his tiny hand, suckling greedily.
‘Did you do these?’ the Health Visitor asked, picking up Alice’s sketchbook.
The book was filled with drawings of her grandfather.
Don’t take any notice, Bee’s voice so close in her ear made Alice jump. Get on with bringing up the child, my great-grandson. I don’t know where you found the fool you’re married to, but you are a mother now, so enjoy it. And don’t forget to plant those seeds. You’ve been a long time in growing them. I gave them to you when you were nine and you are twenty-one now. How long do they have to wait?
She heard the plaintive circular cry of a bird and for a split second could not imagine where she was, or even where reality began and ended. Her grandfather’s voice was very clear. It came from beyond the reef, floating somewhere on the horizon. There was a ship sitting on the horizon too. I wish you were here, she thought.
I’m already with you, her grandfather replied. And for God’s sake, feed the child. I can’t stand the screaming.
Out of the blue she got a letter. It had come via her mother’s address; Alice picked it up on one of her weekly visits. Sita welcomed her vaguely. She had given up her work some time ago, finding it too confusing to remember the names of her clients or the instruction for alterations. After a few disasters she was forced to stop, and now she lived on a disability pension. She showed only a marginal interest in the baby. When he cried she covered her ears with her hands, shouting to Alice that she couldn’t stand the sound, and she refused to hold him. After a while she tolerated his presence although she still would not touch him. But it was Tim whom Sita had begun to really loathe, confusing him with Stanley. Eventually, much to Tim’s relief, Alice began visiting Sita on her own, taking the baby with her. She went several times a week, doing the shopping, clearing up the kitchen, checking her mother was eating properly.
‘She’ll have to go into a home soon,’ Tim kept warning. ‘It’s a matter of time, that’s all.’
Alice continued to ignore his warnings. She was becoming adept at ignoring the things she didn’t want to face. The thought of her mother in a home was more than she could bear. On the morning she received the letter, Sita seemed more distracted than usual.
‘Have you brought me some fish?’ she asked.
‘No, should I have? Have you had breakfast?’
‘I’m very busy,’ Sita said coldly. ‘Can’t you see how busy I am? I don’t want any of the neighbours nosing around here.’
‘Mama,’ Alice said, and then she stopped.
The dolls were back out of their coffins.
‘Why have you got them out again, Mama?’
Ravi began to cry in his pram in the hall.
‘Don’t let any of those doctors near him,’ Sita said, disappearing into the kitchen.
In the hall was a pile of unopened letters that Alice picked up, with Ravi in her arms. A Sri Lankan stamp caught her eye, but she didn’t recognise the handwriting. It was not her aunt’s. The letter was addressed to her. There had been no response to her announcement about Ravi’s birth several months ago and she had assumed the post was not getting through again. But the letter, when she opened it, was not from May. It was from Janake.
‘Who?’ asked Sita frowning.
She had cooked Alice some hot boiled rice and was slicing a very ripe mango into it. Alice was feeding Ravi and reading her letter. Sita sliced some green chillies into the rice and served her daughter.
‘Who?’ she asked again.
Alice ate a spoonful of rice absent-mindedly.
‘He’s coming to England,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember Janake? I used to play with him by the rocks.’
She paused, her eyes sparkling. The beach came back to her fresh as a new day, served up with the fragrance of the hot rice her mother had cooked and the drawing sensation of Ravi’s small mouth as he fed on her.
‘He’s coming to Chiswick, to the Buddhist temple. I’d forgotten he was a Buddhist priest,’ she said, amazed.
And she saw again, with extraordinary clarity and a long, lost ache, the rocks, dark and cool against the sun as she carved her name on them. Her grandfather sat under the shade of the coconut palm, his back resting neatly against the broken catamaran, watching them splash in the shallows, listening to their laughter, knowing he was soon to lose her, unable to follow where she was going. How had the memory been lost?
‘I’ve begun to remember all sorts of things,’ she told Tim that evening when Ravi was asleep and they were eating their supper in front of the television. Tim grunted, his eyes fixed on the news. He reached for his can of beer. Since Ravi was born, there seemed less conversation between them.
‘I thought we would go home on Saturday. The little ‘un has grown so much since they have seen him last, I don’t want them to miss out on anything.’
Home, the word struck her with new resonance. The letter from Janake was in her studio; somehow it wasn’t the moment to mention it.
Nor did she, a month later, mention her meeting at a small café near the Buddhist temple in Chiswick. Janake stood at the entrance to Ravenscourt Park tube station. She knew it was him, even from behind; she recognised the back of his head. She had not known what to expect. Would he be in saffron robes like the Hari Krishna tribes who wandered the streets of London with their tambourines? Would people stare at them? At the last moment she hadn’t wanted to go. But Ravi was in his pram asleep and the day was one of late winter sunshine, casting shadows on the pavement. Fake spring, thought Alice, knowing by now how the weather could take a turn for the worse when it was least expected. It was too late to change her mind. Janake saw her as she crossed the road. He stood uncertainly, recognition instant. He’s grown up, she thought, confused by the current of emotion that flooded over her.
Alice?’ he asked as she hurried towards him, tangling up in his mind with the flower stall selling tulips beside the tube station.
Alice? Is it really you?’
He was wearing a thin coat and dark trousers. She saw he was wearing closed-toed shoes. No, she decided later, it wasn’t what she had expected.
‘Janake! Oh my God!’ she laughed, delighted, feeling the warmth of this February sun as though it was suddenly tropical. ‘I would have recognised you anywhere!’
‘How long has it been?’
‘How are you?’
They spoke together. And then laughed together. She’s beautiful, he thought, astonished. Why does he look so sad? she wondered.
The moment froze even as the traffic moved. Like parts of a silent film, thought Janake. Red buses, dark blue cars. Everything must look so dark to him, she thought, seeing the street with his eyes. But he was looking at the tulips, wishing he had some money to buy her some, thinking how bright they looked. Just like her.
‘So?’ he said instead, peering at the contents of the pram where a tightly bundled Ravi slept.
Alice was lost for words, wreathed in smiles. They were both lost for words.
‘There is a café nearby,’ he said when he had hugged her, taking her arm.
It amused her that he showed such confidence here in London after such a short time. There was so much to talk about and she wanted to make a start before Ravi woke. The last time they had seen each other had been with the sea a
s a backdrop.
‘So long ago,’ she sighed as she stirred her tea. ‘How long are you here for?’
‘One month,’ he said helplessly.
He should not have come, he realised. It had been a foolish desire to see her again. It astonished him, the look of her, the instant effortless connection, the way the day had begun to clutch at his heart. He swallowed. There were things he had to say.
‘I know we’ve lost touch,’ she was saying. ‘Ever since…’ she stopped, not wanting to mention her grandparents.
Janake nodded. He could not stop looking at her. It was as though he had been denying an undetected thirst for a long time.
‘You know my aunt never even replied when I wrote and told her Ravi was born,’ Alice complained, before she could stop herself. ‘She has forgotten us.’
Janake glanced at her. Again he swallowed.
‘No,’ he said.
He could not bear this. Alice did not seem to hear him.
‘Sometimes I think I just dreamed my childhood,’ she said, shaking her head so that her hair loosened itself from the pleat at the back of her head.
Laughing she brushed it away from her face. Time is like the sea against the rocks, thought Janake. Changing everything, very slowly, as if by magic. We were both such children.
‘It hasn’t been all that easy for us here,’ she said, thinking of her absent father and her mother, absent in a different way.
She wanted to tell Janake about her mother’s dolls. She wanted to tell someone who would not judge her for it. Someone who would still love Sita even though her mind was going. She wanted, she realised, her own people.
I must have always felt it, Janake thought. I must have always thought of her in this way, without knowing it. He felt he was in danger of losing his grasp on everything he had built up; his life, without her. I shouldn’t have come, he thought again. Danger lurked within his heart.
‘I know the war was terrible,’ Alice said. ‘But—’
‘There is something I must tell you,’ Janake said quickly, interrupting her.
The palms of his hands were clammy.
‘Alice…your cousin Sarath has disappeared,’ he said. ‘One night there was a dawn raid on the town and a white van appeared driving up the coast. The van went on a house-to-house search. Everyone was asleep, but one by one the street was woken. The men knocked at your aunt’s house. When your uncle tried to put the light on, they hit him until he was unconscious. Your aunt was screaming and the noise woke Sarath. He switched on his torch and as he came out they grabbed hold of his arm and tried to drag him away. Your aunt was crying and holding on to him, but they pulled him away even as she sobbed. She begged them in Singhalese, as she had begged over a Tamil boy in her school, many years ago. You won’t remember, you were small. But it was no use. They hit her and punched Sarath across the face. Then they dragged him out into the van and drove away. The whole thing must have taken about five minutes. That was all. Your uncle Namil was lying in a pool of blood.’
Janake stopped and took a deep breath. Alice sat motionless, her face frozen.
‘That was ten months ago. Just before Ravi was born. Your uncle was in a coma for several weeks. The local doctor would not touch him. A neighbour took him to the hospital in Hikkaduwa. Eventually he regained consciousness, but then he had a stroke and now he is an invalid. May has to do everything for him; she bathes him, feeds him—everything. He cannot speak. But sometimes he starts crying, and that is the worst thing for her. Because, however hard she has tried to find him, there has been no news about Sarath. He has simply vanished,’ Janake said, lowering his voice, looking into Alice’s dark and luminous eyes.
Alice saw Janake once more before he returned to the university in Peradeniya. The temple in Chiswick allowed him no more time for anything else. His face had looked pinched with the cold, and the sense of the sea that he had brought back to her so vividly had faded. Already he looked as though he was preparing for flight.
‘How do you stand this cold?’ he asked, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘It reaches my bones!’
She smiled and he thought that was what had been wrong with this visit. The childhood picture he had carried of her over the years had been of her smiling. But now she no longer smiled.
And your husband?’ he asked gently. ‘Tell me about him.’
‘Tim?’ she said. ‘He loves me. And he loves Ravi.’
The child looked a miniature version of her, wriggling and wanting to be on the move.
‘You should bring him back,’ he said. A feeling of helplessness engulfed him. What could he offer her? ‘When the war is over, I mean.’
He couldn’t bear her suppressed unhappiness, nor she his. Was she aware how lonely she was? he wondered. He has the look of someone who is barely alive, she was thinking, shocked by the reality of it. She wanted to ask him why Sri Lanka cared so little for its own people. He listened to the traffic rushing past and watched the rain dripping slowly along the window of the café where they were sitting as she spoke softly, for the first time, he suspected, of what had become of her life since she had left the island. Loneliness consumed her. He felt it had probably done so since the moment she left. Listening to her talk, dimly he saw the effort it cost her. No one had thought of what the experience would do to her. They had been children, caught up in hatred not of their making, he thought sadly. Accepting whatever life threw at them.
‘There was this teacher,’ she was saying. ‘He was called David Eliot. He was the only one who understood.’
Janake could not bear it. Alice hugged the child, holding him like a shield.
‘But you know, he was just a teacher,’ she told him lightly. ‘I wasn’t the only pupil with problems. I think I leaned too heavily on him. I think he got fed up with me.’
She laughed without joy, and he saw that this too had hurt her. They talked about Sita.
‘She’s losing her mind, Janake. She sits in the house all day. Luckily, the rent is fixed and the landlord can’t throw her out. She would never live with us, even if Tim felt she could. They don’t like each other much, you see. It’s a little difficult.’
He saw that the situation was an impossible one.
‘Can I visit her before I go?’
‘Of course. But I warn you, she won’t remember you.’
Of her father she said nothing. They had gone in the rain to Cranmer Gardens to see Sita. It was only then that Janake realised the extent of what they had been through. Sita, unrecognisable, staring at him blankly, was uneasy with his presence in her house. So they had left. It was late afternoon by now. Tim would be returning from work in a few hours and Alice needed to get home to tidy the house and cook a meal. She was beginning to get restless.
‘I have to go and pack,’ Janake said.
He felt the afternoon break up before his eyes. His plane was leaving at midnight.
‘Will you come back?’ she asked.
He thought she was going to cry. For a moment she had a look on her face that held traces from her lost childhood. He saw that he was taking her home away from her, all over again. But he could not give her false promises. He could not tell her that the war would end soon, that her aunt would reply to her letters, that her cousin would be found. Or that he and she would ever be free to explore other avenues. While they were looking elsewhere, their lives had taken different paths. It had been ordained in this way. They were passing like ships in the night. That was all. Sitting on the bus that was taking him away from her forever, waving, smiling his promises to write, he thought they had loved one another in a different life. Perhaps they would meet again in some other time.
Spring when it came was bitter that year. The daffodils were scentless and the wind was relentless. Everyone said it was the worst spring in decades. Tim repainted the front door and Ravi, crawling now, put his hand on it before it was dry.
‘Alice, where are you?’ Tim said crossly. ‘Take him away—can’t you see I’m doing somethin
g?’
But Ravi had triumphed. The ultramarine imprint of his hand remained forever on the door of Brixton Beach.
Sometimes, in the months that followed, Alice began to imagine she had dreamed Janake’s visit. She had not expected to feel as she had done when he kissed her good-bye. Confused she had run back home with Ravi and put the moment out of her mind. But the image of Janake’s face as the bus took him away kept replaying itself. He is like my brother, she told herself, but the thought did not satisfy her. It seemed as though they had shared a whole life together instead of the few years it had been in reality. Feeling unhappy and worried at her disloyalty to Tim, she decided to bury herself in looking after Ravi, but all she did was spend hours staring at the sandpit outside the newly built patio. The sandpit was small and made of a surreal blue plastic. There was a spade and a cheerful red bucket beside it. Ravi had been sitting in it earlier that day. He was a year old now and on warm days she sat with him outside and let him play in the sand. He loved throwing the sand outside the square box. In fact, he preferred it to anything else.
‘Try to stop him doing that,’ Tim told her almost every day. ‘Otherwise, we’ll have bloody sand all over the place. Look, it’s in the flowerpots.’
Alice could hear Tim’s unhappiness in his voice. She knew that he too was beginning to feel things were not right. Something seemed to have stuck in the throat of their marriage, making it impossible for them both to breathe. But he’s a good man, Alice scolded herself. He’s not like Dada.
‘That was the wind,’ Alice said, referring to the sand.
She had not worried about things like that, she told Tim, when she was a child.
‘Well, this isn’t your childhood,’ he told her, crossly.
She saw how right he was. But what else had she to go on?
‘If it’s a beach you want, then how about we go to Cornwall?’ he said after some time, not wishing to prolong what he thought of as her sulkiness, wanting to compromise. ‘I went there when I was about five.’