Brixton Beach

‘Huh!’ Janake snorted. Alice is fairer than you. Put your arm out, Alice.’

‘That’s because she’s half-caste, idiot. Her father is a Tamil.’

‘So? So are you! Idiot yourself.’

Esther shrugged, losing interest. She stared out to sea. Later on, when she got home Anton, the boy from the fair, was coming to call.

She chewed her mouthful of rice more slowly. Anton had a distant Tamil relative and this made Dias nervous.

‘Just look what happened to Sita,’ Dias had warned. ‘I don’t want that to be your fate. We’re Burghers. Who knows when it will be our turn to be kicked? We should be careful.’

But Esther didn’t care. She would be fifteen soon. She hated this country. She hated the way things were changing, and she did not want to study in Singhalese.

‘But soft, a light shines from the east,’ she murmured.

‘What?’ asked Alice.

Janake began to laugh. Esther was silent. She was thinking of Anton, wishing he had kissed her at the fair. In reality he had grinned and offered her some real American gum. America, that was where Esther wanted to go. Not England.

‘“Gallop apace, you fiery horses,’“ she said loudly, forgetting where she was.

Until the new law had stopped them learning in English, they had been studying Romeo and Juliet in school. No one would ever translate it into Singhalese.

‘What are you saying?’ Janake asked.

‘Nothing you’d understand.’

And she turned to Alice instead, for Janake was annoying her.

‘I was just thinking, you know, men, your sister will have been buried by now.’

Alice too was thinking. She wanted to write a letter to Jennifer. My dear Jennifer, she wanted to say. My sister died yesterday. I will be coming back to school soon. Calling the baby ‘sister’ made a difference to how she felt about it. How odd it all was. A mottled brown, dusty rattlesnake writhed in the dust. Alice imagined her mother in her hospital bed, writhing as if she too was shedding a skin. It occurred to her that, had her sister lived, there might have come a time when the two of them would have sat on the verandah just as she was doing with Esther. Alice would have been the eldest. It was the hottest moment of the day. Her grandfather had still not returned from the funeral. How long did it take to bury someone? Inside the house, the sounds of pirith had stopped and the food was being brought in. Esther moved restlessly.

‘Dust to dust,’ she intoned. ‘But life must go on, and I’m ravenous!’

‘Alice,’ someone called.

‘They want to tie the thread on you. Go, quickly,’ Janake said. ‘Go, Alice. Tomorrow you can show me how you can ride your bicycle on the beach.’

Esther gave her a small shove.

‘The sooner that’s done, the sooner we can eat, child!’

The monks were having their food at last. Strangely, now that they had stopped chanting, Alice could hear the melodious echoes everywhere. She could hear it within the hum of the cicadas, rising and falling, and the imperceptible rustle of the leaves on the murunga tree, and in the waves that spread like ice cream on the beach. She wondered what her school friend was doing now. My dear Jennifer, my sister was buried today and now I’m going to have the pirith string tied around my wrist to help her into the next life. The leaves on the mango tree were covered in fine sea dust. A thin black cat limped in from next door’s garden; she stretched out on the parched flowerbed and licked her wounds. Two thoughts like brightly coloured rubber balls juggled in Alice’s head. One concerned her mother and the other her sister. There wasn’t a single cloud floating in the sky. Eternity was up there, but she was starving. She went hurriedly in to have the thread tied to her wrist.

After they had finished eating, the monks washed their hands in the jasmine-scented finger bowls. They wiped them on the white cotton towels, blessed the house again, bowed and left. Everyone bowed back with their hands together. Aybowon. The house seemed to sigh. It remained a house in mourning, but at least it had been blessed.

‘Nothing more will happen here,’ the servant told Alice confidently. Everyone helped themselves to food in a quiet, subdued manner. Murunga curry with coconut milk, kiri-bath, milk rice, or plain boiled rice cooked in plantain leaves, whichever you preferred. There was jak-fruit curry, and dhal and coconut sambal. Dias gave Alice such a big hug that she squeezed the food all the way up to her throat and Alice thought she might vomit. Then Dias kissed her hard and she lost the two Indian rubber balls of thought she had been juggling. They dropped on the floor and rolled away to be retrieved at some later date. For the moment, Alice concentrated on getting away from Esther’s amma. Janake had disappeared again.

‘Your mummy will be coming home soon, child,’ Dias said, her lipstick-kissed-away-lips looking sad.

I’m fine, Alice wanted to shout, with the defiance for which she was renowned. She wanted everyone to look somewhere else because, more than anything, she wanted to forget about her mother and the baby. She did not want to be reminded about them. She wished her aunt May would come home; she wished her grandmother wasn’t so busy supervising the food. She wanted Janake to come back from whatever he had been sent to do. But most of all she wished her grandfather would return. Dear Jennifer, it wasn’t really a proper baby, but everyone is making such a fuss. She rubbed the letter out of her thoughts.

The afternoon dragged on. There was still no sign of Bee or May.

‘You know, the child is grieving too,’ Dias whispered to an aunt. ‘They must keep an eye on her, cha, make sure she doesn’t get withdrawn or anything.’

Alice could hear her from across the room. Her grandfather had always said her hearing was very good.

‘Where’s Janake gone?’ she asked.

Esther shrugged.

‘I’m going home,’ she yawned.

She had had enough drama for the moment and she wanted to curl her hair before Anton came.

‘Cheerio,’ she cried, waving good-bye.

Alice heard her whistling ‘True Love Ways’ as she left. Dias heard it too and hurried after her daughter, annoyed with her behaviour in this place of mourning. It was a signal that the afternoon had ended. Kamala told Alice that it was time for her to get out of her alms-giving clothes, have a wash and then a nap. So by the time Bee drove his car in through the gate, the house was quiet. The servant boy closed the gate after him and stood waiting.

‘Shall I wash it, sir?’ he asked.

Bee nodded and gave him the keys. Then he went up the steps into the house. One of the monks’ black umbrellas rested against the door. Kamala and the cook had cleared the food away. There was a covered dish and a place set for Bee at the table.

‘Do you want something to eat?’

He nodded and went to wash his hands. When he came back she was standing by his chair.

‘How was she?’

He sat down.

‘As you would expect,’ he said shortly. ‘She wanted to go to the funeral. The doctor managed to persuade her she was not strong enough.’

He ate a mouthful of food in silence.

‘I think the doctor was wrong,’ Kamala said slowly. ‘They should have let her see the body.’

Bee grunted. He had no desire to eat, but he let her serve him.

‘Did Janake come?’ he asked instead.

Kamala nodded.

‘Did he leave a note for me?’

‘Yes. It’s in your studio.’