‘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.
‘Move away, Alice, baby,’ the servant said. ‘You’ll get covered in dust. Why don’t you lie down for a bit?’
Alice went into her room. She didn’t want to be called baby. She stared at the mosquito net hastily thrown aside earlier that morning. She had known this room all her life. It was as familiar as her own hand. The deer’s head that her great-grandfather had brought back as a trophy from England stared down at her. A bowler hat worn by one of her ancestors hung over its face, covering its sad, dead eyes. Alice shivered. The hat had been put there by Kamala years before when a much younger Alice had been frightened by its eyes. No one had ever bothered to remove it, and the deer now stared eternally into the dark interior of the hat. Sitting on the end of her bed, Alice glanced around the room. There was a faint smell of camphor and polish and washed cotton. The lump of clear green glass that she had found on the beach during her last visit stood on the window sill, exactly where she had left it. Everything was as before; only she, Alice Fonseka, had changed. Her guilt hung on an invisible hook in the thickening midday heat. Once, when she had been very small, a servant told her a story about a child who had done something bad. Afterwards, the servant told Alice, every time the child moved, every time she walked or sat down or played in the garden, the devil would walk behind her, dragging his chains. Recalling the story, Alice wondered if she too would be hearing chains soon? She listened, but nothing happened. Through the dazzling bright sea light far down below the cliff came the sound of a passing train. Its echo went on and on.
She stared blankly at the sea. There was no way of explaining her unhappiness to herself. On the beach another group of children jumped in and out of the waves. From this distance they looked like small birds darting about, waving their arms in the air, free. Janake was still nowhere in sight. She watched the boys for a moment longer, hearing their faint laughter. Until this moment childhood had held no threat for her. But as she stood watching the scene below, for the second time that day, the idea that things had in some irreversible way altered began to take shape in her mind. The sun reappeared with renewed force from behind a cloud. She longed to be down on the white sand, laughing at nothing and getting soaked. She longed to see Janake and have him tease her. Standing beside the open window, recalling her grandfather from earlier in the morning, she emulated what he had done moments before he had seen her. Raising her arms up, letting her body descend slowly to the ground, curiously, she tried to imagine how he must have felt. Such was her absorption that she did not hear the gate bang shut or the footsteps on the gravel. Esther’s face looking up at the window startled her.
‘What are you doing, Alice?’
‘Nothing,’ she said crossly, frowning, standing up. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We heard the news,’ Esther said. She sounded shocked, unsure of herself. ‘Amma sent me to ask if you would like to come over to our house.’
Alice was puzzled. Esther sounded unusually friendly.
‘What’s done is done,’ Alice told her, unconsciously echoing her grandfather’s words.
Esther stared back at her. In the bright paintbox-coloured daylight her dress looked strangely tawdry, the traces of lipstick on her lips, drab.
All afternoon Bee sat helplessly beside his eldest daughter while she slept a drug-induced sleep. Then the doctor who had delivered the baby came in. Together they had watched Sita. Her womb had ripped, her uterus would need stitching, and when she finally began to remember she would have to bear a different kind of pain.
‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor had said.
Bee noticed how dark his eyes were, just like pools of rainwater.
‘She’ll recover,’ the doctor had told him, ‘physically, anyway. There will be no more children, but she’ll recover. The stitches will heal, the scars will be hidden, outwardly everything will be in order. I’ve made sure of that.’
He shook his head. Then he told Bee he had decided to leave the island. He was no longer able to stay silent about all those things he was witnessing, he said.
‘I became a doctor so I could alleviate suffering, not add to it. But this place—’ he had lifted his hands in a gesture of incomprehension—’is turning me into a coward. I fear for my wife, my family. I am no longer able to do my duty as I should.’
Bee listened without comment.
‘I’m going to Australia,’ the doctor had continued.
Outside the room the noise of the ward drifted towards them. Bedpans clattering, newborn babies mewling, laughter, even.
‘Yes,’ Bee agreed finally, expressionlessly ‘My daughter will be leaving too. They want a better life for my granddaughter.’
That had been all they had said. The doctor placed his hand lightly on Bee’s shoulder. Then he nodded briefly and left. His face had been full of a grave pity. It had almost been the undoing of Bee.
At dinner that night Esther and Dias came round