Beggar's Feast (16 page)

“And your exams? Your results?”

“Daddy, may I have a cigarette?”

“Arthur, why have you come home now? What have you done? What has happened?”

“What have I ever done but what you have made me do? Did I ask to become an English doctor? Did I ever ask for anything but what's mine by birth?”

“I decide what is yours by birth. And what's yours is your sister's dowry money, what's yours is the tuition and boat tickets and Parker pen it gave you. Now tell me your results and go see her in her time.”

“I won't.”

“You won't, or you can't?”

“I—can't.”

Now Robert knew for certain. He didn't know how his son had pulled it off, the letters were always stamped from England, and Arthur seemed to have read the letters Robert had sent to the address he had given, Euston Square, London, but Robert knew. The boy must have come home on the last of the tuition money, he thought. He wondered where he'd spent the rest of it.

“Son, putha, what colour are the lorries in London?”

“I can't.”

Meanwhile, inside, Latha was about to pour out the broth when she thought she heard Alice calling from the back bedroom. She had started it cooking the evening before, and by morning it had boiled down by half. A full moon night, and between fits of sleeping until dawn Alice had been breathing
Soo sa
like Latha told her to.
Soo sa
But no, it was an outside noise, some songbird or other lonely at first light. Latha returned to the broth. Using one of the showy metal kitchen things the new husband had brought, Latha skimmed the pond-brown foam from the surface of the bubbling soup and smacked it on the ground outside the kitchen door, where a cat considered it until two dogs barrelled in. Then she stretched a piece of muslin over the rim of the pot and drained the marrowy liquid into a cup that she would take in to the girl, whom she had raised from birth to bride and now birth. Alice was not lying in the same room as her mother had been, but still. Same house, same high round belly and otherwise branch thin. She would also weaken too much if the labour went too long. And so she would be made to drink this cup and would be made to drink more. Latha could also have asked Ralahami for a spoonful from his brandy bottle, which he kept in his room beside his English shaving kit and Portuguese aftershave—more things brought to the village in the vehicle. Latha had a joke with the washerwoman and with Lal, the Ralahami's servant: soon the husband would run out of things to bring and then start fastening pieces of the city itself to the top of his vehicle and drive them to Sudugama. In time the joke passed down into the village itself, so that whenever the motorcar was heard from far off, never more than once a month, they watched from their dark doorways half expecting to welcome home at last their borrowed memories and shared notions and rumours and legends of the city itself: English horses the size of elephants; Chetty men with chests painted like jungle cats; windowpanes and saltwater waves.

The brandy the husband brought a few months before would be fast-warming for the chills that would come between pushing, but Latha wanted him nowhere involved with Alice's labour. Any him. When it came to babies born in this walauwa, Latha made no distinction between memory and omen. Even a man standing in the hallway was too much. At least the Ralahami seemed to accept this, she thought; he had been waiting on the verandah smoking and talking in low voice with Arthur since dawn. Later, for nothing more than some leftover sweets, she knew, Lal would tell her everything that was said between them. Meanwhile they had not come near the kitchen threshold even to ask for their own tea. Had she the choice, she would have sent the Ralahami and Arthur to fetch the husband from Colombo in the vehicle with Blue Piyal, as Latha and Alice had taken to calling the driver outside the boy's hearing. But Alice had already sent the boy to bring the husband, who had sent the boy with the car from Colombo a few days before with instructions that when it was time, Alice should be driven down. He'd made arrangements for her to deliver at a city hospital, and if Alice thought it necessary, Latha could come too. Motorcar to city hospital and Latha could come too. Ha. Had she the choice, Latha would have given Blue Piyal a return route of her own devising, which the boy would have followed like a prayer, she knew, if only she said Alice wanted him to do it. A route that took father, brother and him, the husband, from Colombo to Galle to Hambantota, Hambantota to Batticaloa to Trinco, Trinco to Point Pedro to Puttalam, Puttalam to Kurunegala to the village. And by then, went Latha's hoping, the men of the family would arrive at the walauwa to be greeted by Alice in her old age, Alice still living.

She would not mind such slowness for the women who had been sent for either, Alice's aunties, the Ralahami's elder sister and the younger, the bride-of-next-week as she was still known in the village. They lived with their fat smiling husbands and overfed sons and fat dowry daughters in Mahaiyawa, on what they thought was the far better side of Kandy town—you could tell from how they looked and looked around those rare times they visited. Who, upon their grand fussy arrival, would take over with Alice, just as they had at Alice's birth, and at Alice's wedding, and Latha would have to play along again, play like they knew better. And she would; she always did; she never but seemed to.

“Latha! Latha aiyo, it's coming again, hurting!”

“Aney wait I am coming!” The broth splashing onto her hand, Latha rushed to the back bedroom, her bare feet pounding the bare floor.

When she reached the room the pains had already passed and Alice's head was turned to the side, her lips pursing air. Her many gold earrings, which she had insisted upon wearing for when he came, played back the morning light shining through the barred window. Latha could still remember boring the girl's ears with a lime thorn and then curing the bleeding pinpricks with the cut lime. How many times had Latha swept from the corridor into this very room so someone would find Alice hiding in the almirah, the old almirah that had been junked behind the kitchen two days after the wedding, when another, a hotel almirah from the city, had been sent in its place.

“Alice-girla, take this before they come again.”

“Who is coming? When is he coming?”

“Just take this will you.”

“Medicines from Aiya?” She had been born a minute after him but always gave Arthur respect as the older brother. She eased herself up to her elbows and wiped the sweaty strands of hair from her brow. Latha wiped too, needlessly, and then cupped her face, a jewel-perfect face finer than any hand save a mother's deserved to touch. She leaned in, as she had so many times, with words and a voice and a look meant to be kept between them, to keep them as Latha thought they were—themselves unto each other and then came father, brother, the rest of the world, husband.

“Mad? You think I'd let Big London Doctor come near now?

This is strength for when you need it. I put only a little garlic. Drink before they come again.”

“Who's coming? When is he coming? He has to come for this, no?” Alice Kandy had never known a married woman as anything other than a visiting aunty or a bowing villager but even such passing glances were enough to know that what was hers was not enough. Nine months of it and finally, now, there was no more smiling and excusing that his work in the city kept him so far away; no more ignoring the empty chair kept daily for him at table and the empty bed beside her own; no more pretending along with Latha and the smirking envying rest of them that the gifts he sent with his blue-eyed driver and his own weeks-apart day-and-night visits were the free and fine goods of a modern married woman. He had to come for this. She turned her head, looking past the first gift, her grand GOH almirah. Until the contractions came again Alice's eyes stayed there, on the threshold that gave way to the morning-bright corridor empty of all husbands.

He had to come for this. If he did not, Piyal would say something. Piyal decided this again and again as he drove from the upcountry to Colombo, the Morris's lights catching nighttime walkers and wheeling bats and the quartz-coloured eyes of woken dogs and so many insects that more than once he'd had to pull to the side and wipe a translucent furze of crushed wings from the headlamps. He would say something even in the new Englishman's hearing, because she had said she wanted him, Sam, near for when baby came. And so she had sent Piyal to bring him back. And he, Piyal, would bring her husband back or he would say something, even do something, if he did not come for this. Alice, Madam, she called him Blue Piyal. Nine months he'd been her husband's driver. Her Blue Piyal. Seeing her every few weeks, he knew how many earrings she wore in each ear and the singing of her bangled wrists going and coming. He knew where, whether upon or below her growing belly, she kept her hand when she was tired or laughing or pained. He knew every glance and angled view that could be had while she sat in the back of the vehicle.

Reaching Prince's Building, where Sam had recently taken over Henry Paulet's vacated office and apartment scheme, Piyal could hear them inside, talking. But Piyal knocked and entered anyway and for the first time in his adult life, he spoke first.

“Sir, please, you must come.”

Sam did not stand. His new Englishman turned in his chair.

“What, Piyal? Is she waiting in the vehicle?”

“Sir, please, you must come.”

“Why
must
I come, Piyal? Is Madam in the vehicle?”

“Sir, please.”

“Piyal. Is. She. In. The. Vehicle.”

“No, sir. She is in the village, and baby has started.”

“I told you to tell Madam she was to come to Colombo when it was time.”
Latha
.

“HA!” said the Englishman, Charles Curzon. “You told your wife to be driven here to have the baby? My God, on these roads! She'd give birth in the backseat after the first bump!”

“Sir, please, Madam said you must come.”

“Must come, is it?” the Englishman answered Piyal, looking at Sam, who said nothing. “Well then.” He cracked his knuckles. “Of course that's the right thing to do. Shall we continue this conversation upon your return?”

“Piyal,” said Sam, “tell me, did you drive through the night?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is very good of you. I will tell Madam when we reach the village. Would you like to sleep and then we'll go?”

“No, sir.”

“Right. Good news. Baby is coming?”

“Baby is coming, sir.”

“Right. And so I must go.” Sam stood and smoothed his vest. He walked to the door. Piyal and the Englishman followed and Sam held it open and Piyal went first and Sam put his hand on the Englishman's shoulder and Piyal turned just as Sam closed the door and set the chain and they were already talking again. And Piyal went to knock and knock it down but what if he did and then said and tried to do and all of it for her but he was sent off for trying and never saw her again?

The next day, when they arrived at sundown in Sudugama, the boot crammed with toys and tins and dresses, Sam came to the room and waited for Latha to leave, who passed into the hallway with her arms full. Then he knelt beside Alice's bed and touched her forehead and told her he would have come right away but the driver had fallen stone asleep, day before, at his office door. And Alice nodded with nothing behind it, too tired for grief or gratitude, too exhausted to care whether her husband had been beside her every moment since her own birth or come just now, decades later, the twins themselves grown and married and gone. A boy and also a girl; the boy was considerably larger. Leaving Alice asleep, Sam nodded to the sideways-smiling aunties in the front room, accepted handshakes from Robert and Arthur and gave out cigarettes and then asked Latha to see the babies. He counted them, their twenty fingers and twenty toes, and he left the next morning. He had to buy more toys, toys now for two, toys for twins, toys for boys, toys for girls. And so for years afterwards, Sam Kandy's son and daughter would know him as the rest of the village did—as engine noise and parcel string, as a day's flash of love and pinstripes.