Brixton Beach

‘Where’s Alice?’

‘She’s playing with the cat next door.’

Stanley snorted but refrained from comment.

‘Do you want some tea?

He nodded, glancing at her as she left the room. Sita’s face was closed; she looked as though she might have been crying again. He sighed heavily. What the hell, he thought. It wasn’t that he hadn’t any sympathy for her. He had. He felt the injustice of what had happened, if not the physical loss of the baby, as much as any husband in his position could. Sita came in with a tray. She had a plate with an egg hopper on it and some juggery. There were two teacups, a pot of tea and a jug of boiled milk. She had made hoppers for him, knowing it was his last day. Unexpectedly he was overcome by a feeling of pity for her. She was still a good-looking woman, he decided, glancing at her sideways. Although the doctor had said there should be nothing intimate for a few months, he wondered if she would refuse him, on this, his last day. Who knows what might happen to me, he thought, a chill of self-pity passing over him. I might be the one to die next. But at that instant he heard the child’s voice through the doorway, talking to next-door’s cat. Sex would not be possible with her around.

‘I’ll get some scales from Aruguna,’ he said, picking up the cup of tea she held out to him. ‘I’ve got to go over there anyway, to say good-bye.’

After Stanley had gone to get the scales, Sita closed up the house. She had two errands. One was to pick up a sari for her sister, and the other was to go to the spice mill for her mother to have some chillies ground into powder. She called to Alice to put her shoes on and they went out. Sita felt desolation walk beside her. The reasons were so many she could not decide which pained her most. There was the ghost of the baby, lying in her arms. Sometimes she felt this was the greatest ache, but then she would decide the child and all she had suffered was a thing apart. So what was it, she wondered dully, for it wasn’t the thought of Stanley’s departure that bothered her. Last night when he had thrown his indifference at her, taunting her, turning all she had suffered into useless mockery, she had realised that his leaving mattered less and less. She did not care about the new life he kept talking about because she had no life left in her to start. The real problem she felt was that she no longer had the will to go on. This morning she had noticed a rope at the back of the kitchen yard. She had no idea where it had come from, but it was dark and heavily coiled. She imagined it hanging neatly from the rafters, turned into a knot, a noose, a gallows.

‘Why do people say “a bolt of silk,” Mama?’ Alice asked, tugging at her hand, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Why do thunder and silk come in bolts?’

Sita didn’t reply and Alice’s chatter continued. Why, why, why? thought Sita bitterly. The ordinariness of every single day was more than she could stand.

First, they headed for Pettar and the sari shop. The sun was beginning to dry the mud as they dodged the garbage spilling out on to the roadside. Sita held her sari above her ankles with one hand and Alice with the other. Overhead the trees were alive with whistling bulbuls; bright yellow sunbirds. Alice stared upwards as she walked. Always after it rained she noticed the colours glowed more vividly and the air became scented with the smell of temple flowers.

‘Anay, look where you’re walking, Alice, please,’ her mother said, tugging at her hand. ‘There’s filth everywhere.’

The shops were opening their shutters again. Men in sarongs squatted on the ground, their bodies curved in long bent question marks; street sellers and beggars rubbed shoulders as the tiffin boys ran back to their kitchens with empty curry tins.

They turned towards the railway station, going deeper into Pettar where the silk merchants had their emporiums. May’s going-away sari was ready to be collected. Guilt filled Sita’s head, it stopped up her ears and filled her nose with its sweet sad scent. In spite of the disgrace Sita had brought to her family, May was getting married. No thanks to me, thought Sita, with a bitter smile. I’m being punished, she decided, this is my fate. All around the tropics teemed with life and colour; with the frantic hurry of rickshaw men’s feet, the grating sound of gears on antiquated London buses and the intermittent cries of the streets, while never far off, like a steady heartbeat, was the soft sound of the ocean. Sita heard none of it. A slow refrain played in her head: I should have died, I should have died, I should have died. Taking my shame with me. Removed myself from this place.