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