‘You must look after Mummy for me, huh?’
He was going, he said, to send for them both as planned, in three months.
‘You can come on the boat together,’ he said with an enthusiasm she hadn’t noticed in him before. ‘And there will be a new English school and new English friends. You are a lucky girl!’
Alice frowned. She didn’t want new friends. She wanted to play with Janake and to see Jennifer. A lot of things had happened since she last saw Jennifer. The thought made her frown deepen and she opened her mouth to argue. Seeing this, her mother smiled nervously. Two deep dimples, from her life before the baby, appeared on Sita’s face.
They stayed there long after her smile had gone, as though wanting to remind everyone of what Sita had once been like. Ah! thought Kamala triumphantly, you see, she will be happy again. It’s time she needs, you fool, thought May angrily, looking at Stanley. Why can’t you touch her, you cold bloody fish!
‘Don’t frown, Alice,’ Sita said. ‘We have to get out of this place. The way your father has been treated, what happened to me, all these things mean we can’t stay here any longer.’
The dimples seemed at odds with Sita’s words. A large garden spider ran across the verandah floor making her shiver. There were so many things Sita hated about this place. Things that now would never go away but would only get bigger. Alice was thinking of the baby in her own way. Dead or alive, she saw the baby would have always been a problem. From her mother’s surprising determination and her father’s suppressed anger she could see that leaving had become a reality and there was no room for negotiation. But she understood too, with uncanny insight, the baby would come with them. The servant boy in the house opposite was tuning his transistor radio. The music reminded Alice of the fairground ride on that now distant birthday. A wave of rage, unexpected and frightening filled her chest. She didn’t want to cry in front of anyone, but where was her grandfather?
‘You’ll miss my wedding, Stanley,’ May was saying without sounding the slightest bit sorry.
‘Yes, he will,’ her sister agreed.
‘There have been more riots,’ Stanley said.
He appeared to be challenging them all in some way. He was glad his father-in-law wasn’t present. It was impossible to speak freely in front of him. Pig, thought May. She too was glad her father was absent. Tamil pig! Her father would have read her thoughts and reprimanded her.
‘They killed my child, men,’ Stanley shouted, losing control without much effort.
Watching impassively Alice saw his face had grown darker. Her mother looked like a coconut frond beaten by the rain.
‘Singhalese bastards!’ Stanley shouted, Bee’s absence giving him courage. ‘A wedding is hardly a priority, men. We need to get out before any more damage is done to my family’
The music on the servant boy’s transistor had changed. Alice knew it was the song called ‘True Love Ways’. Esther would be wearing her taffeta dress and dancing in time to the music.
‘The overseas Tamils are fed up,’ Stanley said. ‘I’m telling you, they’re becoming a force. One of these days this damn government will be whipped.’
‘What are they planning?’ May asked, fear leaping like a fish in her throat. ‘What about us? What about the thousands of Singhalese who are innocent, who have no problem with the Tamils?’
But Stanley wasn’t interested.
‘They’re your people, men,’ he said. ‘Speak to the butchers who killed my child. When the time comes, there will be no pity left in us, hah!’
‘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,