Brixton Beach

‘Stanley,’ Bee said calmly, ‘you’re speaking like a fool’

He had come in unnoticed. A butcher is a butcher. Don’t forget the doctor who saved your wife.’

But Stanley, either from the strain of keeping his mouth shut for too long, or the confidence brought on by his imminent escape, couldn’t stop.

‘No disrespect, men, but it’s your people who are asking for a civil war. If that’s the case, they’ll get one, just wait a little. Remember that all’s fair in war.’

Sita began to weep silently. Bee took out his pipe and tapped it against the side of the wall. Alice saw his jaw tightening. Then with a visible effort and no change in his voice he spoke.

‘I understand how you feel,’ he said. ‘I know you have to go. The situation is getting intolerable. Of course you must go. But it need only be for a while. There are many, many Singhalese who think as you do. These people will not allow this to develop into a civil war.’

He took out his tobacco pouch and began packing the pipe. He didn’t look at Sita, he did not even look in her direction, but his whole body strained at the sound of her weeping. The transistor music was still playing insanely and the sea had a beautiful silvery line on the horizon. The cook was scraping coconut, and next door the servant boy was sweeping the verandah. A crow cawed harshly in two-part harmony. The sound went on and on turning in the dazzling air. The day had been transformed into a bowl of blinding light. Of the sort that had dazzled their English conquerors, thought Bee, as he stood in the doorway, quietly. It had made the English mad, he had once told Alice.

He had only been half joking at the time and Alice had laughed at the thought of the soothas going mad. But it was true, they had come here to conquer and instead the light snared them.

‘Don’t they have light like us in England?’ Alice had asked at the time.

‘Oh, heavens no! The English went back home blinded, and of course they wrote about our light. The nineteenth century is full of it,’ he had said, grinning. ‘The tropics became a strange, magical place in their imagination after that. They went away different!’

Kamala had laughed. ‘Stop it!’ she had said.

But Bee had continued looking solemnly at Alice, the devil in his eyes.

‘It’s true!’ he had said. ‘They were drugged by too much sensation. Their books are full of it, as you will read when you get older. English gentlemen seduced by the narcotics of jungle love!’

And now she was going there, he thought. He felt ill. She had asked him what it would be like.

‘Will it be different in England?’ was what she had asked. The question had rendered him helpless.

‘I believe it will be,’ he had said eventually. ‘Probably in ways you would not expect. Not better, not worse, you understand. Different. Anyway, you’ll see, soon enough.’

‘Do I have to go?’

That was what she had asked next. But how was he meant to answer that?

‘Listen, Putha,’ he had told her, to keep himself out of the story, ‘this is your first home, you were born here. That’s a powerful thing, don’t ever forget it. But it may not be your last, you understand. And that’s all right, too. It will be beautiful in England even though the difference will surprise you. You’ll just have to search for it.’

Standing in the doorway he recalled that conversation. Wondering if he should have told her what he really believed; that this place with all its tropical beauty was where she should remain. And also that he believed it would make no difference. For although she would leave Ceylon, Ceylon would never leave her. Listening to the rush and crush of waves now he wondered how long it would take for them to see the consequences of such a violent uprooting. And he thought of this small beautiful place, once the centre of his world. Without her it would be the centre of nothing. Stanley’s voice buzzed in his ear like a large bluebottle. With a great effort Bee dragged himself back to the present.

‘Then go for a time,’ he said out loud, without looking directly at Stanley, making his voice as neutral as possible. ‘This situation will not last forever and the change will be good for you all after what has happened,’ he said, thinking too that Alice needed her parents’ attention.

‘But come back before she changes too much,’ he added brusquely, ‘give her an education and then come home.’

And he went outside, as though the matter was settled, to mix some colours for a new print he was making, calling to Alice to come and help him.

Soon after that Sita and Alice went back to Colombo to prepare for Stanley’s departure. Back to the rickshaw-clogged streets lined with ramshackle buildings. A new harsh mood was in the air. As if a whole secret way of life had died while they had been away and the city was now preoccupied with different things. Sita walked slowly. She was still bleeding internally. At the crowded outpatients she queued with other mothers, nursing their babies. The air was filled with a tinnitus of flies as she sat, one more saried woman in a colourful line of reds and yellows against a lime-green wall. Smallpox inoculation had come to Ceylon for the first time. All around them infants screamed. Sita watched dully. She could not understand how a broken heart could still palpitate with such pain. Alice sat quietly beside her, swinging her legs. After her injection they were going to see Jennifer’s mother and the new baby. Then tomorrow she would go back to school. The thought of facing her class teacher Mrs Perris made her nervous. Before she had left, her grandmother had told her again not to worry about telling her friends that the baby had died.

‘Many people lose babies in this country,’ Kamala had said consolingly. ‘You mustn’t worry.’

‘Why should she worry what people think?’ Bee had demanded, overhearing the conversation. ‘Alice has better things to think about. She understands these things happen, don’t you, Putha?’

Alice had nodded and then begun to giggle because her grandfather was tucking in a small parcel at the foot of her bed.

‘What is it? Can I see?’ she said, struggling to get it.

It was a book she had been wanting. Another Enid Blyton.

Waiting in the clinic, watching the other children being given their vaccinations, Alice half closed her eyes, thinking of the Sea House. Her mother stared ahead not speaking. When it was her turn, the nurse told her she was having a tetanus injection as well.

‘Put your arm out,’ the nurse said. ‘You mustn’t forget to collect your smallpox certificate,’ she reminded Sita. ‘You won’t be allowed into England without it.’

Sita nodded.

‘You are a lucky girl, going there!’ the nurse continued, smiling encouragingly.

‘I don’t want to go,’ Alice told her.

She spoke softly and the nurse didn’t seem to hear. The needle branded a small circle of pinpricks on her arm. Alice clenched her fist, saying nothing.

‘There might be a small reaction,’ the nurse told her mother, after which they went out into the burning sun. Suddenly Alice didn’t want to go to Jennifer’s house or see Jennifer’s mother or the baby boy she had just had. The sun boiling down on her hatless head made her feel sick.

‘Why do we have to go now?’ she whined.

‘They’re expecting us,’ Sita said shortly. ‘It will be rude if we don’t go.’

She was carrying a parcel of some of the exquisite dresses made for her own baby.

Jennifer lived in Colombo 7, where the gardens were lush and green and freshly watered. They took the bus, leaving the broken beauty and the chaos of the city. Even the bus appeared subtly different to Alice; emptier, cleaner. Not many people had reason to go to Colombo 7.

‘Look, all the signs have changed,’ Alice told her mother in English.

‘That happened weeks ago,’ her mother said.

Sita clutched her parcel close to her chest. Alice swallowed. She didn’t want her mother to give away the baby dress, but she could see from the expression on Sita’s face it would do no good to bring the subject up. In the last few days, her mother had stopped her terrible crying and Alice was afraid if she mentioned their baby it would all start again.

‘My arm hurts,’ she said instead, hoping to give her mother something else to think about.

Sita ignored her.

‘Don’t scratch it,’ was all she said.

At Ratnapura Road they got off. The streets had widened out and were tree lined and shady. Jennifer’s house was in a cul-de-sac. A manservant opened the gate. Orange blossom and shoe-flowers cascaded over the wall. A water sprinkler was watering the grass and underneath the murunga tree stood a large shiny pram. Some dogs tied up and out of sight began to bark hysterically. Instantly they heard the alarming high-pitched cry of the baby. Sita pulled Alice along sharply, nodding at the servant woman who led them into a large cool room with tiled floors and air conditioning. Things happened in quick and disjointed fashion after that. Jennifer arrived and hugged Alice but couldn’t stop staring at Sita. Alice watched her mother try to give Jennifer’s mother the present, but because she was holding her baby Sita had to put the parcel on the table. Sita looked small and a little frail. It made Alice suddenly very angry. The baby cry was like a siren, urgent and impossible to ignore. Jennifer’s mother laughed delightedly and began to feed him.

‘Take Alice to play,’ she told her daughter.

‘Is it true, you are going to England?’ Jennifer asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the grown-ups.

There was a Russian doll on the window ledge. Alice picked it up and began to take it apart, each doll getting smaller and smaller until the last one was so minute that she fumbled and dropped it.