Brixton Beach (39 page)

The child opened his dark eyes and in the moment before he cried, she saw herself reflected in them. Motherhood fluttered within her. By the time Tim returned from work, she had lost another day in dreams.

His wife’s island within its reef of bright waters was out of sight, and life teemed noisily in his own house but Tim was uneasy. His innate sense of order was being eroded. Ravi was what mattered, he insisted, needing to be sure that Alice’s past was erased. Tim knew he would have to be the one to banish it. The two lives could never be compatible. The sea and all it stood for would simply have to go.

‘I don’t mind,’ he said, reasonably. ‘I don’t have a problem with Asians, obviously, and I like the curries. But,’ he added, warming to the subject, ‘at the end of the day…’

Her heart sank. She was becoming a little too used to the idea of what happened at the end of Tim’s day.

At the end of the day, I don’t think of you as
Asian
, not really. You’re British, you’re one of us. You’ve lived here so long you wouldn’t know what to do even if you were forced to go back. In fact,’ he continued, glad she was not arguing with him for once, ‘I guarantee you’d be scared if you were suddenly told to go back to that bloody place!’

The thought amused him and Alice saw with relief that it was possible to hide all she felt and join in with his laughter. But later on,
when he thought she was asleep in front of the television, she heard him telling his mother unhappily that he had married her without understanding this whole Asian thing.

‘They’re a bunch of weirdoes,’ he had said. ‘Not Alice, but I mean generally speaking. They’ve got a lot of mumbo-jumbo attached to them!’

He was silent.

‘It’s not Alice’s fault,’ he mumbled, finally. ‘I blame her parents.’

Tim sounded confused. He had married Alice in good faith, he told his mother.

‘It could be a touch of post-natal depression,’ the doctor said, when Alice visited him. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about your dreams. How’s your mother?’

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 as 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!’