Alice picked up a small chip and smelled it.
‘That’s a medicinal smell,’ Janake told her. ‘The herbal doctors will pound it up and make it into a poultice.’
‘Shall I take some for my mother?’
‘If you like. Ask the cook to grind it for her. Is she bad?’
Alice nodded. She was reluctant to tell Janake how bad her mother was, or that she didn’t want to look at her face. He was a boy who would stop a bus on the road if there were a tortoise crossing. How could she tell him she had caused a death? She frowned. Janake was absorbed in stacking the wood into piles.
‘Can we go to the sand dunes?’ she asked.
‘Okay,’ Janake said without looking up. ‘Wait a minute till I finish this. We can walk to the next bay. You might find things for your collection.’
He was right. They found some old driftwood with paint on it and a piece of blue fishing net.
‘It must have come from one of the catamarans,’ Janake said, examining it.
The wood revealed two colours, one underneath the other. Aquamarine over-painted by cobalt blue. It was scratched and peeling, still damp from the water. The evening stopping train passed slowly by. It was half empty. Glancing up, Alice saw a woman with bright red lipstick eating a samosa. When the train slowed down at the level crossing a man in a white shirt leaned out of an open window and watched them. He smiled and waved at Janake. Alice had a feeling she had seen him before. Then she remembered that he had come to her grandparent’s house during the riots one Singhalese New Year. He had slept in her grandfather’s studio for a few days. He had looked very frightened at the time and then he had gone away. The train began to move off and the man waved at them both.
‘That’s my uncle Kunal,’ Janake said as the train gathered speed. ‘D’you remember him? I was visiting him the week you had your birthday.’
‘Does he live with your aunt then?’
‘She’s not my real aunt,’ Janake said and then he gave a shout. Half buried in the sand was a beautiful piece of wood. He began pulling it out.
‘Oh, can I have it, please, Janake,’ Alice cried excitedly.
‘I’m getting it for you, wait! Don’t pull it, you’ll break it.’
‘Oh! Look!’
‘What are you going to make with it?’ Janake asked curiously. Alice shook her head. She couldn’t say, but she wanted to take it home anyway.
That night, when the household were finally in bed and Sita turned restlessly in her dreams, Bee told Kamala about Alice’s afternoon of foraging.
‘My studio is full of her finds,’ he said with admiration. ‘She’s going to be a maker of things when she is older.’
It was only to Kamala, and under cover of darkness, that he dropped his guard.
‘It’s as if…‘ he paused, ‘the only way she can make sense of what she’s leaving behind is through these random finds. They are her way of finding direction.’
Kamala was silent. What could the child possibly store up? How could she make any sense of what she was losing when she had hardly begun to understand what this place was about?
‘She knows,’ Bee told her stubbornly. ‘She’s no fool, she has her instincts. She knows what matters. And in any case, it won’t be knowledge needed by her for years.’
On their return from the beach Alice, asking him for some glue, had started to make a small construction. Bee had hidden his amazement.
‘Has it sunk in, then?’ Kamala asked. ‘That she will be going.’
How could it have sunk in when even she could not comprehend any of it?
‘What’s all the fuss about? She’ll be back, you’ll see. In no time at all,’ Bee said roughly.
Oh yes, thought Kamala, then why are you so upset? The crescent moon appeared from behind a cloud. The same moon that would shine in England. We will have the moon as connection, Bee told himself, firmly.
‘Dias thinks we should get her to talk about Sita and the baby,’ Kamala told him hesitatingly.
‘Why can’t that woman keep her mouth shut?’ Bee asked irritably. He moved restlessly. ‘I don’t want her trying her hand at British psychology on this family.’
In spite of her sadness, Kamala wanted to laugh. Bee had no idea how he sounded.
‘When she feels the need to, Alice will talk,’ he declared. ‘At the moment all she needs is for us to stay as we’ve always been. There’ll be time enough for change in her life.’
The clock in the hall struck the hour. Outside beyond the trees the sea barely moved. Someone had ironed out the waves. In the distance they could hear the faint wail of police sirens. Tonight the sounds were coming from the direction of the town. This is how it begins, thought Bee, his mood changing swiftly. We are the witnesses of the start but who knows what it will lead to. Yesterday a drunken Singhalese doctor was careless with a Tamil life. Tomorrow will be different again. And what will happen when the Tamils retaliate? What then? In the darkness, Kamala reached for his hand.
‘Children work these things out through their play,’ she agreed, knowing it was her reassurance that he really wanted.
‘She won’t be a child for so very long. The journey…’ he stopped.
When it came down to it, a life without her was unthinkable.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Kamala said, not believing it, frightened too. And anyway, before all of that there’s the wedding.’
They lay side by side, turning over their thoughts, discussing May and her forthcoming wedding which would now have to be postponed, at least until Sita could cope better. May, the easy child, always happy, always laughing thought Kamala. She still laughed. She had been born blessed, with the knack of making her life easy. And now she had picked a loving man. Since the stillbirth, knowing how upset May was, Namil had taken to visiting her every single evening.
‘When is Stanley coming?’ Kamala asked softly, knowing she was on dangerous ground.
Although Stanley had rung most nights to speak first to his daughter and then his wife, he had not left Colombo since the funeral.
‘I don’t care if I never see the man again,’ Bee said. ‘I’m sick of the way he thinks he’s a white sootha.’
He knew he was being unfair, but Bee no longer cared. Stanley did not interest him.
‘I suppose he’s busy at the moment,’ Kamala said placatingly ‘Sita says he has to work overtime at his office in order not to take a cut in his last pay cheque.’
Two moths danced in and out of the window, lighting up the moonlit sky. The smoke from the mosquito coil rose upwards in thin white tendrils.
‘What if he doesn’t send for them?’ Kamala asked, voicing the question in both their minds. ‘What if paying their passage makes no difference? What if he just forgets them?’
Someone was shining a searchlight on the bay and all sorts of colours appeared out of the night.
‘If he doesn’t send for them, it’s simple. They’ll stay here,’ Bee said. ‘But I don’t think it’ll come to that.’
Two days later Stanley came to see them, travelling up the coast by train. It was a Saturday. He brought some chocolate and something called bath cubes sent by his brother for the niece he had never met. Sita sat out on the verandah to talk to him. Even from a distance they looked like awkward strangers meeting for the first time. Not like husband and wife, thought May. Alice, eating her chocolates,