Brixton Beach (7 page)

They walk back down the hill carrying their prizes. The moon paints a long silver strip across the ground. The road has been recently tarred
and the smell of hot bitumen mixes with the smell of the sea. Alice breathes it in deeply. The fair is following them home in magical bursts of heady lights and smells and cries, and the faint jaunty sound of music. She dances ahead of her aunt, waving her thin arms in the air. The moon picks up her shadow and throws it on to the empty road, turning her into a child on stilts.

Ts this child not tired yet!’ sighs May, pretending despair.

She is swinging Namil’s hand as she walks. She too takes little dancing steps.

‘I’m not a bit,’ Alice sings out in time to the music. I’m never going to be tired because I’m nine today!’

They all laugh. They are still laughing as they reach the house. Bee, who has been working in his studio, comes out to greet the revellers. Kamala is shaking her head and trying to look stern.

‘Come, come, Putha, it’s very late,’ she tells Alice. ‘You must have a wash and go to bed,’ she says, giving the little girl a hug.

Amma, she still has bags of energy,’ May cries in mock complaint. ‘Namil and I have been trying to wear her out with no success!’ she adds, kicking off her sandals and throwing herself down on one of the many planter’s chairs that dot the verandah.

‘Well, I’m taking her to the beach early tomorrow morning, so she’d better get some sleep or she won’t be able to wake,’ Bee tells her slyly.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Alice says, knowing when she is beaten.

Everyone laughs and she follows the servant in, the faint music from the hill still luring her like the tune of the pied piper.

In the last hour, the darkest moment of the night, just before dawn breaks, a doctor hurries into the room. He is a different, younger doctor. He too is a Singhalese; a family man, a father. Capable of hiding his feelings under a mask of professionalism. The woman on the bed has bled so much she is only semi-conscious, and the doctor knows he has not got much time. The baby, the girl child, he knows, is already dead. Later he will fill out the death certificate.
Still birth
, he will write. And although no one will be watching, his hand will have the faintest tremor; his jaw will tighten imperceptibly with anger. That will be all.

Later, in disgust, he will apply to leave his wretched country, unable to stomach what he has always known. For he, more than anyone, knows that life is cheap in this Third World paradise. It comes and goes like waves on its many beaches. But all of this will happen later. On this long, solitary night the doctor will do his job and deliver another dead child. He will see the baby’s soft downy hair as it comes away on his hands, when he lifts the body out of this woman. The woman, herself semi-conscious now, far beyond tears, has one last request.

‘Let me see her. Please, let me see her,’ she begs.

But the doctor, his face softened by pity, his heart filled with pain, shakes his head. The woman sees the compassion in his face in the growing light of the new day.

‘What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over,’ the doctor says.

It is his only mistake that night.

D
AWN WAS STILL AN HOUR AWAY
. The caravan of delights had packed up its brightly coloured lanterns. Dulith the puppet man, long fingers drumming against the side of his truck, headed for the coast road. He was followed by a trailer carrying the carousel horses and another with the stilt-man at the wheel, trailing tinsel through the window. The clowns slept, chuckling softly, traces of make-up still on their grimy faces; and the helter-skelter men, having concertinaed the helter-skelter down to almost nothing, moved their trailer with hardly a sound. Leaving in silence was what they always aimed to do, waking no one, refusing to disturb the children and their dreams. The monkey lay sleeping beside the lion tamer, exhausted and dour, and the lady card reader, having taken his wig off, urinated on to the road from his moving caravan. It was all part of the fun of the fair. It was all part of life for the fire-eater and the shadow dancer and the inflatable man. Another town, another crowd, another group of noisy punters eating freshly spun candyfloss. All in a day’s work; here today, gone tomorrow, with no time for regrets. The sea rose and fell as they hit the coast road, heading north. They would be back in a year; same time, same place, right here on the hill where the short, rough grass would have grown over the chalk numbers that had marked the positions of the rides.

Alice stirred. A telephone was ringing in her dream. It rang and rang again insistently, pushing against the carousel that played out its tune
in her head. The feet running across the coconut-polished floors sounded like a thousand galloping horses. It was still dark, the sun had not risen; the mosquito net around her cot was undisturbed. Opening her eyes, Alice saw the sky on the point of being punctured by light. Her dream fled the room, leaving behind a puzzling echo. She frowned, trying to recall the music that played on the merry-go-round, but it evaded her. Nothing moved. Even the sap, bluish-white as mother’s milk, had stopped dripping from the rubber trees in the plantation nearby. But
something
had disturbed Alice. The edges of a peculiar awareness nudged her gently, like an old shell murmuring, insisting she awoke. She sat up, fully awake, alert now. She was hot and the flower-scented garden was calling out to her, so in a swift movement she threw off the mosquito net, stood on the low window sill beside her bed and launched herself on to the gravel below. It was the water pump dripping outside the gate that had woken her, she decided. Someone had forgotten to turn it off. Further along the garden a long beam of light extended across the ground. With one blow it cleft the garden into two. She saw with surprise that her grandfather was up and working in his studio. Alice hesitated, wondering whether to disturb him. Overhead, the beginnings of dawn poked a hole in the sky. Faint rose-pink light flooded out, spreading across the horizon, seeping into the sea. The air was filled with a selection of newly unwrapped scents from the Jacaranda tree. Alice crossed the gravel in her bare feet and stood on the empty coconut oil drum near the window of the studio. Her grandfather had his back turned to her. He was bent over his etching press, but the studio looked tidy, not at all as it usually did. Black scrim hung neatly on their nails, stiff with dry ink; his cleaned rollers were stacked on shelves above his head and none of his copper plates were in sight. Alice craned her head. What was her grandfather doing at this hour? Something about the angle of his body bothered her and she hesitated for a moment longer, not knowing whether she should disturb him. Bird-arias exploded into the morning. She heard a soft, puzzling sound and then she froze in terror as Bee sunk slowly to his knees. The next instance she toppled over and crashed down into the gravel.

The noise brought him to his feet. He stood in the doorway, a thin man in a white sarong that matched his hair. His face looked strange, as though it was a jigsaw puzzle that had been put together in the wrong way. Confused, she stared at him and it was another moment before she saw with cold, creeping horror that he was crying.

‘Your mother has lost the baby,’ he told her simply, spreading his hands out in front of him.

Seagulls carried his words in circles above her head, their keening cries tangling with the breaking waves so that forever afterwards Alice would be unable to separate any of these sounds from what had been said. Forever afterwards she would connect the lost baby with the birds and the vast drum of the sky pouring out light as though from an open wound.

Time stood still for her as the events fixed themselves on her mind. Gradually, as the sun gained strength, a thin line marked the horizon, separating the sea from the sky. The waves became transparent as lace while the sky continued to lighten. The waves arched their backs, crashing, concussed against the beach. People passed by, silhouetted against the sun. Far away in some other reality a train hooted its way across the coast. It was the Colombo express, travelling up from Dondra, the very tip of the island.

‘Come, Alice,’ Bee said, when he could speak again. ‘The worst is over for her.’

But he looked terrible, making no move towards the house either. Where had they been when Sita had needed them most?

‘Let’s go for a walk on the beach,’ he said finally, taking her hand.

A baby girl, he told her, haltingly. Her sister. Not the brother called Ravi as her mother had hoped.

‘She didn’t live to see the day.’

He was exhausted. A delicate eggshell sheen spread across the water even as they watched. Fishing boats were bringing in the night’s catch, trailing long nets full of silvery cargo through the shallows. An arrowhead of gulls streamed behind, heralding the day with their shattering cries. The fishermen, splashing through the water, dragged the boats on to the beach; then they unloaded the catch and threw it carelessly
into the flat woven baskets that would be taken to the fish market later. Dead fish and sea-rot smells drifted on the breeze, swooped on by hosts of fluttering gulls. A sense of unreality hung in the air.

‘The doctor was responsible,’ Bee said. He seemed to be talking to himself. ‘A Tamil child’s life is worth nothing.’

‘I hate Singhalese people,’ Alice told him.

Her voice sounded unfamiliar, uncertain. She was bombarded by emotion, tossed in a cross-current of confusion, feeling she ought to cry. No tears would come. Instead, small evil thoughts danced in her head and swam behind her eyelids. Had the baby been blue like Mrs Perris’s dead husband? Did it cry? And hanging over all her questions, terrifying her, was the memory of the wish she had made. She glanced at Bee. He had stopped walking and Alice now felt a cold wind clutch at her heart.

‘I want you to understand,’ Bee was saying quietly, looking directly at her, searching her face. ‘People will think you’re only a child and they will hide things from you. Later they will tell you it was for your own good. But you won’t stay a child forever. And I don’t want you to misunderstand.’

Some of the shock in his voice was replaced with anger.

‘You must know the difference between hating one person and hating a whole race. Don’t make that mistake. The doctor was a man, a pariah man. Not even a dog can be that bad. Chance made him Singhalese, remember that, Alice. He would have been bad anyway’

They walked on silently. I have a dead sister, thought Alice, trying out the words in her mind. She shivered inwardly. Already she felt different.

‘Such a little life,’ Bee murmured.

They were walking along the same road that Alice had danced on just hours before. Now it had become a remote and distant place and everything had changed in a night. The day lay crushed before her. With a flash of insight she realised she was struggling with events beyond her control. She had become a girl with a dead sister. Nothing was certain any longer. They reached the beach. She could hear the sounds of children’s voices carried by the breeze towards her and she
saw a few boys pulling a boat out of the water. They were the boys who lived in the little cluster of huts close to the railway line, children of fishermen. Squinting against the sun, Alice watched them silently. Sadness tugged at her, bringing with it a threat of tears. But the tears still would not come and the unmistakable feeling of aloneness made her feel she was no longer part of the beach or these children. Perhaps, she had never really belonged here, she thought in dismay. The sea breeze was making it difficult to breathe and there was a queasy, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wished her old friend Janake would return. The dead sister hung as heavy as a Tamil thora chain around her neck. Other children had had dead relatives, but they had not willed them to be dead. Frowning suddenly, she wanted nothing more of it.

‘Alice,’ her grandfather was saying, ‘your father wants to take you to England. Did you know?’

Alice stared at him. Understanding knocked against her like a ball in a socket. She heard the words, curiously familiar and yet not believable.

‘You don’t get a passport unless you’re going to travel,’ she said slowly, remembering Esther.

‘Yes.’ Bee nodded, the tone of his voice confusing her. ‘That’s true, darling.’

He hesitated.

‘In England,’ he said, ‘you will be quite safe.’

She was silent, digesting this.

‘We cannot keep you safe here any longer,’ he continued. ‘You must go; the young have no future here. It is best, for a while, at least.’

He stopped walking and stared out to sea. She could not read the expression on his face. All she knew was that in the wide-open aspect of the beach he looked frail and very dear to her. I
am
. safe here with you, she wanted to cry, but the words seemed to lodge in her throat and the sea breeze whipped her breath away and lost them.

When they got back, after her father had phoned, Alice heard the facts, such as they were. By the time they filtered down to her they had become simpler, softer. A tale murmured in the shocked voice of her aunt May.

‘In England,’ May told her, ‘childbirth is safe. But in this country it depends on who you are and who your doctor is. Your dada is not a rich man. He could not pay for the private hospital’

May had been crying on and off ever since she had heard the news; her eyes were bloodshot and swollen. After school had finished she was going to Colombo to visit her sister. And sometime after that, Kamala told her granddaughter, there would be a very small funeral.

‘Can I come?’ Alice asked cautiously.

She was too afraid to voice what she was beginning to suspect; that she had willed this to happen.

‘No, you must stay here. Grandpa Bee is going to bring your mama back here to recover. She won’t be going to the funeral either. She’s too weak. You can stay and look after her.’

Alice said nothing. What would she say to her mother when she next saw her? Would her mother have bloodshot eyes, too? Guiltily she wondered how much Sita would guess of her part in the baby’s death.

‘Is she thin now?’ she asked in a small voice.

And only then did she remember her friend Jennifer.

‘Jennifer’s mother is having a baby too,’ she told Kamala in dismay. ‘She said they were going to have a boy. A Hindu astrologer told her mother that finally, after five girls, she would have a son.’

It was too late. Jennifer would tell everyone that Alice had wanted the baby to die and then everyone in the class would say she had made a curse. Perhaps, thought Alice in panic, she would be sent to the police.

‘Do I have to go to school on Monday?’ she asked, wanting to cry. ‘Can’t I stay here a bit longer?’

Yes, darling,’ her grandmother said, looking at her in a funny way.

Perhaps she too had guessed the terrible secret, thought Alice, really frightened now.

You’ll stay until after the funeral. Then you must go back to school. And if Jennifer asks you, simply say the baby died. There’s no shame in that, Alice. It wasn’t your poor mother’s fault.’

Stanley rang again.

‘You’ll have to be kind to your mother,’ he told Alice, as if even he had discovered her secret. Reluctantly she agreed, aware of Bee’s watchful eyes on her. Afterwards, without a word, Bee got the car out to drive May to the hospital. He would go with Stanley to the undertakers to organise the funeral. Kamala gave May a food parcel of rice and bitter gourd with chillies. The cook had baked it with fenugreek in the clay oven, knowing it was Sita’s favourite dish.

‘She’ll be hungry,’ Kamala whispered, ‘even though she won’t realise it.’

Kamala too sounded close to tears. She gave May a flask of coriander tea.

‘To dry the milk.’

Alice glanced at her.

‘She may have a fever.’

Kamala was speaking hurriedly, avoiding looking at May. Alice watched them from the corner of her eye, both fascinated and repelled by the whispering voices. Everyone was avoiding looking at each other, as if they feared something awful would show in their faces.

After they had gone the house fell silent. There was still no sign of Janake, as Alice wandered around aimlessly.

‘Why don’t you see if Esther is around?’ Kamala asked.

But Esther was nowhere in sight either and Kamala, busy getting the room ready for Sita, had no time to talk.

Alice looked around for something to do. On her grandmother’s instructions, she reluctantly decided to do a drawing for Sita. The thought of her mother’s return was beginning to curdle uneasily within her. She drew a picture of the view from Mount Lavinia Hill with its bougainvillea-covered houses, its coconut grove and its glimpse of the sea. After some deliberation she decided not to draw the ships that were so constantly present on the horizon. The ships that she had taken for granted all her life had, since this morning, taken on a new and more sinister meaning. So instead she drew the three rocks beside the hotel where she had often swum. She hoped it would bring back happy memories for her mother too.

The servant had taken a mattress out on to the verandah and was dusting it. Then she began to sweep Sita’s old room. Sita would sleep alone so she might rest properly. The servant took all the furniture outside and began to clean it.