7

THE WEDDING DAY, A DAY OF SKY-BLUE JAUNTINESS, had given way to a phosphorescent night. The moon was very full.

‘This is a very good thing for the family, sir,’ the astrologer said, pointing to it on his way out.

He placed his hands together and bowed, first to Bee, and then again to the rest of the Fonseka family. He had lied to them, for the sake of kindness. What was the use of upsetting them on such a day? It was not as if they could change their fate and get themselves a different karma, and in any case the day itself had gone well. The astrologer shrugged inwardly, thinking the bride was a good-looking woman and there was nothing more to be said on that score. The small child dancing underneath the murunga tree laughed and waved at him. If he remembered rightly, this was the child who was going to live in England. For a moment the astrologer hesitated. Perhaps he should offer to draw up her horoscope before she left? Perhaps this would be the one who escaped the fate of the others. He glanced at Bee. If the astrologer remembered rightly, Mr Fonseka was not given to horoscopes. What if the child’s fate was the same as theirs? No, best to leave well alone, thought the astrologer, murmuring goodnight and slipping out without fuss through the gate. What will be will be, he thought, sighing.

‘Let’s play five stones,’ Alice suggested.

‘And then we can have a race on the bicycle,’ Janake agreed.

‘That’s not fair,’ Alice protested. ‘You’re much better at riding it than I am!’

Janake’s mother, who had been helping the servant, came out. She was smiling.

‘We have to go soon, Janake,’ she warned.

‘I’ll take you back,’ Bee told her. ‘Don’t worry.’

The servant came out with some iced coffee in tall frosted glasses.

‘Does anyone want any more to eat?’ Kamala wanted to know.

Her brother Sarath had gone, packing his family into the car and driving off. He had work in the morning. Kamala would not see him again for months.

‘Your turn next, Sita, Putha,’ he said, kissing his niece good-bye. ‘If I can get time off work. I’ll come to the harbour.’

Kamala winced. A thread of pain pulled sharply at her.

‘Can I have some cake, Mama?’ Alice asked.

She was dancing to Esther’s rock-and-roll music.

‘Haven’t you had enough?’ Sita asked dubiously, but surprisingly she was laughing. Alice thought her mother’s tone was nice. Was her mother happy that Aunty May had left home? she wondered.

‘No, of course not,’ Esther told her, amused. ‘She’s got other reasons, child!’

‘Why are you calling me “child”?’ Alice demanded.

Janake, having given up riding Alice’s bicycle while balancing a ball on his head, began eating again.

‘You’ll be sick,’ Esther said disapprovingly.

She looked at her new wristwatch.

‘How much did that cost?’ Janake asked, stuffing another piece of cake into his mouth.

‘How should I know,’ Esther said, yawning. ‘It was a present from Anton.’

‘Esther, Putha, time we left,’ Dias called.

Janake looked at her with interest.

‘Is he your boyfriend?’

‘Mind your own business,’ Esther said crossly, and she went inside to collect her gramophone record.

Janake snorted.

‘I don’t believe anything she says,’ he told Alice.

‘Will you be on the beach tomorrow?’ Alice asked. ‘I want to ride my bike again.’

She wanted to surprise Janake by giving him her bicycle as a present when she left for England. By now it was time for Janake and his mother to leave too.

‘Come, I’ll walk you back,’ Bee insisted, picking up his pipe.

‘See you tomorrow,’ Janake called out, and Alice nodded.

Sita was helping Kamala clear some of the dishes.

‘I’m going to the annexe in a little while,’ she murmured. ‘I told him I would say good-night.’

Kamala pretended not to hear.

‘Where’s Alice got to?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t it time she went to bed?’

But Alice had vanished, slipping through the gate, running after her grandfather, laughing as she followed Janake and his mother down the now empty Station Road. It was almost like the night of the fair, she thought.

In fact it was well past midnight before Sita was free. Kunal was waiting, his crutch resting against the wall, its outline thrown into shadow by the naked light bulb. Tomorrow night he would be gone. The doctor would arrive in his car to take him on the first leg of the journey to Elephant Pass. All afternoon he had practised walking with his crutch for hours on end, waiting for the wedding to be over and Sita to come back. Finally, exhausted, he had picked up the book she had left him and begun reading it. The moment the door opened he turned his head.

‘Can you stay?’ Kunal asked.

She nodded.

‘Sorry I took so long.’

Kunal smiled.

‘Yes, you were a long time,’ he said softly, half teasingly. ‘Many years late. But at least you’re here at last. So I’m glad.’

He stretched his hand out. The light from the bulb cast a yellowish shadow, making his eyes very black. It crossed her mind that he had a fever again. A part of her hoped he did, so he might stay another day. He was looking gravely at her, saying nothing. She saw herself reflected in his eyes for a moment.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he told her, ‘you know, I no longer have any footsteps.’ And he shook his head as if he was amused. A man without footsteps. Someone should write a kavi about it.’

‘Don’t,’ she said, unable to bear it. ‘Don’t say things like that.’

Tomorrow he would be gone and already she understood that a part of her would follow him. How would she live? Like a ghost? Fear was a timeless thing. Kunal was pulling her gently towards him and in a dream-like state she felt his lips, full and soft and surprisingly cool. He had no fever; only his eyes burned. Somewhere on the roof a bird’s feet scratched. The devil-bird, they both thought without saying a word. I am rudderless, she wanted to say. Without you I am cast adrift. Instead she asked:

‘Shall I come back? From England. Shall I?’

He didn’t know what to say.

‘If you want me, I’ll come back.’

Still he said nothing, looking at her, sitting with her back against the light. His entire life had retreated into shadow. It seemed a petty thing to say, but he said it anyway:

‘I have only one leg.’

He meant it as a warning, but she shook her head, disregarding it.

‘One leg, two legs, I don’t care!’

She cried softly, leaning against his shoulder. He could feel her body shake along the length of him as he held her with his two good arms. At least I can hold her, he thought. Her hair was perfumed by a hidden flower. He would remember its scent forever now. Portions of her limbs seemed to become luminous in his mind as he touched her.

‘I have no plan,’ he smiled. ‘If you do what you really should do, you will have what you want.’

He was quoting from something, she could not remember what. He has a beautiful smile, she thought. A sense of being alive, of being here and possessing all of it—this place, the hour, most of all him—overwhelmed her.

‘Do you understand that, until I met you, I was just trying to survive?’

She nodded. She had slipped into the bed with him and he felt the heat of her very close and strong against his one good leg.

‘Turn off the light.’

The noise of insects grew louder in the darkness. A bat fluttered against the bars of the window, confused, then vanished. The tropical night remained an ebb and flow of unfinished business.

‘Can you imagine life with a Tamil cripple?’

‘Why do you have to talk like this?’

He knew he was trying to hurt her, but he needed to make his warning strong. He wanted her to know the dangers. Only then could he be sure.

‘Even if you lost the other leg it wouldn’t make any difference. I will come back or you must come to England.’

He tried and failed to contemplate England. Living with her and his crutch. Daily life. For a moment he considered it.

‘If you want it enough, it will happen,’ she told him, reminding him of Alice. ‘I will find out how to get you to England. Many Tamils go there. You can’t stay in Jaffna forever.’

And your husband?’

‘He doesn’t care.’ Sita shook her head.

She was surprised to feel no bitterness. It had gone while she was preoccupied with other things.

‘He hasn’t cared for a long time. I did all the caring. I think…’ She was more certain now: ‘I wanted to be like Thatha. I wanted a cause. So I found Stanley.’

‘Am I your cause now?’ he teased.

In the darkness she shook her head vigorously. He could feel it moving from side to side, reminding him again of Alice. In spite of himself he smiled.

‘No. Stanley was my cause, not you.’

She was crying again and he tightened his arms around her, kissing her hair.

‘We are the same,’ she told him. ‘I can feel it. We are the same. It is unimportant that you are a Tamil. Whether or not you are a Singhalese is unimportant too.’

And then, her face buried against him, her voice muffled, she said.

‘I don’t want to go.’

She was pushing against the limits of his endurance.

‘Shall I stay, then?’ he asked, but now was not the time to tease her. His arms wound around her like some great enclosure, keeping out those many things she no longer wanted.

‘You must go, for Alice,’ Kunal said at last.

The sound of his words imprinted themselves on the night.

‘Everything you’ve said makes me certain it’s the only thing for her. She is young; you have to give her a chance of a better life. If I can, I will come to England. I promise. When I get to Jaffna, I know some people who have influence. I’ll talk to them, see if it is possible. We can write. You must tell me what you decide about Stanley.’

‘I will leave him,’ Sita said. As soon as I can, I’ll get a job. I can save money. Thatha would want it, I know. I can get a divorce. I don’t think it will matter so much in England.’

She spoke eagerly. He remembered a time when he used to visit the Sea House, before she had married Stanley, when she had been like this, young, impulsive. Laughing, quoting Shakespeare, her long hair flowing as she darted through the trees. This is madness, he thought, mesmerised by what she offered him, unable to look away.

Alice doesn’t even care,’ Sita said. All Alice cares about is Bee.’

Alice cares about many things,’ he admonished her, smiling. ‘Don’t underestimate Alice.’

‘But what I mean is, she won’t care about a divorce between her father and myself. She never saw much of him when he was here.’

Kunal was silent.

‘Will you write?’ Sita asked fearfully. ‘Will you keep in touch?’

He ran his hand across the length of her body. Her sari had come undone and he undid the hooks on her jacket.

‘Is the door closed?’ he asked.

She nodded and he could feel, suddenly, that she was very tired, and his regard for this filled him with great tenderness.

‘You’re tired, no?’

He placed his hand on her breast and left it there, without moving, feeling her heart beating beneath it. She was silent and he felt her breathing beneath him.

‘How do you know?’ she asked, finally.

‘The way you kissed me is tired.’

It was difficult to hold her and lie with only one leg for balance and he turned her slightly to face him. He began to kiss her breasts, first one and then the other, holding them gently. He feared these were their last moments together. Pulling her jacket gently away from her shoulders, he felt her move herself so that first one arm, and then the other, was free. He could feel all the upper part of her body, naked and silky smooth under his hand. She turned and half raised herself and she was almost on top of him, lying across his body so that he felt her against the stub of his severed leg. He felt the pain of its absence break from him in a small cry of agony. Instantly she moved away. Through the cracks in the window he could see the outline of her face and when he touched it he felt it was once again wet from her tears. The room seemed to wait, as though it was witnessing an unfinished act.

‘This is not a good idea,’ she said. ‘You are still not recovered.’

‘Will you do something for me?’ he asked.

Outside in the garden there was no longer any light; the sea was simply a dark, silent swell. His tenderness as he touched her once more stretched into the darkness. Someone in some future time will think of us, he thought.

‘I will do anything,’ she said.

Bee smoked on the verandah alone. The light had faded hours ago in the abrupt way of these parts. Tonight there were no stars and into this darkness, sweeping an encircling arrow of yellow at regular intervals, came the beam of the lighthouse. A small breeze rustled the trees and Bee breathed deeply. The wedding had gone well. Even he could not complain. Given their precarious situation, there was nothing more he could have asked of the day. But still he could not sleep. Kamala slept, Alice slept and Sita, he knew, was with Kunal. Maybe that was why he was wide awake. What am I worrying about? he thought. She is not a child; she is not a stranger to heartache. The beam from the lighthouse could be seen swinging with brilliant regularity across the bay and in one of these spells of darkness left by it every twenty seconds or so he caught a glimpse of the water, deceptively calm and docile. Bee stared at the beam without seeing it. He hoped May would be happy in whatever way was possible. If there were any hope of contentment it would be May who would find it. Bee was not a man of words. He knew it to be a fault; didn’t Kamala tell him, every day, he should talk more? Words were not his thing; explanations were best done with brushes. The colour of a place, the angle of the light, a tree, these spoke volumes. But words? No, he was useless with words. Bee sat very still on his planter’s chair, without creaking, drinking in the silence. A shape moved and came towards him, slowly, tiredly.

‘Come to bed,’ Kamala said. ‘What good will it do, waiting for her? She will be all right.’

He wished he had Kamala’s optimism. But as he turned to do her bidding he caught the beam of light again, flashing against his eyes and cutting him like a sword.

The next morning, Kunal left. It was the hospital doctor who drove the car. They were all present. Even Esther’s mother was there. Kamala had made a parcel of food for the journey. Bee would follow them in his own car as far as Colombo, then he and the hospital doctor would leave Kunal in the hands of the contact. After that he would rest for a while and then, if he was well enough, he would be taken by the back route to Elephant Pass and on, up to Jaffna. All in all, Kunal had been two months with the Fonsekas. Alice watched her mother walk with him out to the car. Kamala stood holding his arm with perfect ease, as if she had held his arm in this way for years and years. Kunal looked very frail; the skin on his face was the colour of the ash used by holy Hindu men and his clothes hung loosely on him. One trouser leg flapped uselessly in the slight breeze. Everyone avoided looking at it.

‘Get his other bag, Alice,’ Sita said. ‘Quickly.’

She raised her hand to her throat and Alice saw she wore a necklace of milky moonstones. Alice was about to ask her where it had come from when Sita twisted her hand and suddenly the necklace snapped. It fell to the ground in a staccato of stones.

‘Never mind, never mind,’ Dias said quickly as they bent to retrieve it.

‘I’ll restring it,’ Kamala added.

‘Yes,’ Sita agreed, faintly.

She was watching Kunal, who stood, helpless. A swell of regret seemed to pass through her and her voice sounded low and without colour. Looking at her mother, Alice saw she had become her old cross self.

At the last moment, just as Kunal was being helped into the waiting car, they heard the gate open. Alice saw her grandfather turn around sharply but it was Janake. He carried a small parcel done up in plantain leaves which he gave Kunal. Janake began speaking to Kunal in a low voice. He was talking in Tamil. Alice watched, astonished. She had not known Janake could speak Tamil. Seeing her staring at him, Janake grinned.

‘You haven’t been to the beach,’ he said, switching to Singhalese.

‘No, I know.’

Kunal smiled a sad half-smile.

‘England will be better than you think,’ he told Alice.

She did not want to talk of England. Really all she wanted was to go to the beach.

‘When you stop worrying, you’ll get to like it there,’ Kunal was saying, but now he was looking at Sita, who had moved slightly apart and stood motionless beside the mango tree, her face pale against the lushness of the leaves. Again Alice had a sense of the tension flowing from her mother. Kunal held out his hand, hesitantly. For a split second Alice thought her mother was going to ignore him, but then she stepped forward and, putting both arms around his neck, she kissed him lightly on both cheeks. After which Kamala and Dias kissed him too and wished him a safe journey.

‘Good-bye,’ he said, and the word spoken in English had the strangest finality to it. They stood and watched in silence as the car turned around and headed in the direction of Colombo. And then, slowly, they went indoors. There were only three weeks left.

On the afternoon of the last day, while her mother shut herself in her room, Bee took Alice to buy some fish. The men selling the catch were on the beach, carrying their huge flat baskets on their heads, trailing seagulls.

‘You’ll be sailing close to the equator before turning towards colder waters,’ Bee informed her. ‘Tomorrow,’ he added, pointing to the horizon, ‘you will be out there. And I will stand here, at this time, and watch for you.’

‘I shall wave,’ Alice told him and he nodded.

They were both determined to hold on to any certainties they could find.

Once again Alice had a curious feeling of standing on the edge of that shelving beach, with the sea dropping steeply, fathomless and mysterious before her. If she moved she would fall into the void. The day and all its iridescent loveliness were as insubstantial as a dream. A train rushed across the bay, hugging the coastline. Through the heat haze the brilliant blue carriages and the swaying coconut palms took on an air of unreality, as though they did not exist. Panic struggled in her. It was very simple. She did not want to go to England. A cry, mute and unheard, rose in her heart. And then her grandfather’s voice, already from some distance, came to her.

‘So will I,’ he said, quite seriously.

He was looking crossly at her.

‘No more biting your nails, huh!’

‘No,’ she agreed, but he didn’t seem to be listening.

Something was stopping her from breathing. Perhaps she was ill, she thought, and would not be able to go. Bee went on staring at her and then beyond towards the sea. Fishing boats filled their view. Was it her imagination or did the men on stilts stand nearer to the shore? The sea was like crushed sapphires.

‘I’m coming back,’ she said again, uneasiness curdling and clutching at her stomach, for he seemed suddenly, unalterably old. ‘You’ll see.’

She tugged his hand and he nodded. After that he took a long time choosing and buying her favourite red mullet for lunch, even though eating seemed an irrelevance.

‘What a bit of luck,’ he said. ‘There must have been a good catch last night!’

She was puzzled. He talked as if the buying of the fish was of the utmost importance. They walked towards the hamlets in search of Janake, but he was still out with the fishermen.

‘He is coming to see you in the evening,’ Janake’s mother told Alice, smiling. ‘Don’t worry, he hasn’t forgotten you are going. He will come.’

It shocked her that life carried on, regardless of what was about to happen. Janake out in the boat, getting on with his life, just as he would tomorrow and the day after. But where would she be tomorrow? And one day, Bee was thinking, she will be a grown woman. I will not see that. This is the end of my sightline. The rest will be imagination.

Towards evening, when the house was a frenzy of last-minute packing, they went for a final walk on the beach. Sita had come out from her room and was collecting up the jars of pickles that Kamala was labelling. She looked pale and subdued. The servant wrapped each jar carefully in plastic sheeting and wedged them in the trunk. Then she slipped in a bag of curra pincha, curry leaves, and umbalakada, Maldive fish. There would be nowhere else in the world that Sita would find these ingredients, the servant knew.

‘Be careful,’ Kamala said. ‘Make sure it’s wrapped tightly’

‘Don’t go too far, Father,’ Sita called. ‘It’s getting late.’

‘Just up to the hotel and back,’ he promised.

‘I’ve finished packing, Mama,’ Alice told her.

‘Good girl!’

Both were speaking carefully to each other as if aware that from now on they would be thrown together for a long time. The house was stifling. Alice tugged at Bee’s hand. She wanted to get out.

They had walked the same stretch of beach hundreds of times, but tonight was different. Tonight they walked slowly and in silence. Darkness was descending, shadows lengthened imperceptibly and still there was no sign of Janake.

‘He’ll come,’ Bee consoled her, puffing at his pipe. ‘Maybe in the morning. He knows what time you’re leaving.’

Pausing, they watched the late Colombo express rush past. Two kites floated lazily in the rosy sky and the sounds of byla music came towards them on the breeze.

‘You’re coming to the boat, aren’t you?’ Alice asked suddenly, but Bee shook his head, sucking on his pipe.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, not tomorrow. It’s important for you to remember this place. If I say good-bye here, you will always remember it.’

And even though she was dismayed and tried to make him change his mind, he would not be budged. Some time later, when she sat on the verandah, and Bee had disappeared into his studio, Alice asked Kamala.

‘Why aren’t you both coming to the harbour?’

Kamala began combing Alice’s hair. She combed it silently and for so long that Alice thought she would not answer her. Then at last she spoke.

‘He can’t bear it, darling,’ she said. ‘He can only just manage to get to the station. Don’t make him.’

Kamala’s hands moved with soft and wide sweeps against Alice’s head, lingering against the dark hair, combing it into silk.

‘But I’ll be back,’ Alice said angrily. ‘Doesn’t he know that?’

‘Aha! Look what I have here,’ Bee cried, returning with false joviality.

He had made a present for her. A painting of the house, and the beach, with the sea glimpsed in the distance. He had used only cerulean blue and an emerald green and most of the light was defined by the brilliance of the white paper so that it seemed as though the land and the water existed within a bowl of sunlight. On the back he had written, For my beloved granddaughter Alice, from her grandfather with his blessing.

‘It’s a watercolour,’ he told her, tapping his pipe, watching her. ‘You are going to the land of the most beautiful watercolours in the world. Did you know that?’

Alice did not know.

‘Well, you are, so go and see them for me, when you’ve settled in London. Tell your mother to take you. Look at the Turners and the Boningtons and the Cotmans. I believe you’ll be able to see Constable’s skies, too. The English are the best at using watercolours. You will have to look very closely at them to understand how they use the light.’

No one spoke. Alice could not bear the look on her grandmother’s face. Almost everything in this house will survive us, thought Kamala. We are already ghosts on this verandah. Each night, when my girls were small, I sat out here, but nothing could have made me imagine this night.

Outside, the darkness seemed full of ghosts. A bullock coughed nearby and the frogs that lived in the ditches began to croak quietly. Two lizards circled each other under the yellowing light. Tonight was full of insects, the servant complained, bringing in a mosquito coil.

‘I wonder where Kunal is,’ Kamala murmured.

‘Oh, he’ll be at the Pass by now,’ Bee told her.

Sita moved her head slightly. No one could see her face in the darkness. She was thinking of Kunal’s last night and how, when she had left his room, she had found her mother hovering outside, a worried look on her face, ready to hold her as she wept. At last, Kamala had told her, stroking her hair, she had found love. But that night now seemed like a million days ago.

‘He must be nearing Jaffna,’ Bee observed.

‘I’ll find a way,’ Kunal had told Sita. ‘I’ll come to England somehow, you’ll see.’

And she had whispered:

Or I’ll come back.’

‘I have the strangest feeling about leaving this place,’ she had admitted to Kunal. ‘Not only am I going to miss you, but I’m going to miss the person I am now, at this time, too. None of us will ever be the same again.’

And now he was gone, carrying his loss like luggage, his crutch under one arm, leaving her to continue alone. The day was almost over; tomorrow would bring the thing she had waited so long for. She saw how her desire to be gone had set her apart from everyone around her. It had put her into the same category as a person with a limp or an extra thumb. Her aunts used to say it had made her different, had attracted the wrath of the gods. Whenever she had observed any injustice, each time another Tamil was discriminated against, she had thought, I will leave. I will go away to a better life. Stanley had been merely a step in that direction, and the lost baby had compounded the feeling, making her need to flee even more urgently. But she had reckoned without Kunal. Meeting him, seeing his pain, had made her waver, fatally.

‘I am too burnt-out to stay and fight,’ she had said.

‘You don’t know what courage you possess until you are called to show it,’ he had replied. ‘You are the bravest of women. Wherever you are, here or in the UK, it doesn’t matter; you will remain brave. You represent all the women of this island to me.’

That was what he had said, lying there in the stifling heat, day after day with his phantom limb. But now the exodus, planned for so long, was almost upon them, and her mother with her mending, and her father in his planter’s chair, sitting as they would tomorrow, was too much for her to bear. A cockroach buzzed past. The servant began sweeping the verandah and all around the simple sounds she had listened to all her life gathered together with great sweetness in Sita’s head.

Alice sat quietly on the step.

‘You’d better go to bed,’ Sita murmured at last and her daughter, without protest, without fuss, stood up and kissed them all goodnight.

As she climbed into her small bed under the net, Alice heard the tell-tale whine of mosquitoes moving invisibly in the room. Far away in some other part of the bay she heard a heavy thud followed by the plaintive noise of a police siren. It went on and on, an endless hyphenated crying, and it kept her awake for a long time. Her grandparents and her mother were moving outside. Sometimes one of them spoke in a low voice so as not to disturb her, but she could not sleep. Great tropical stars shone over the sea and she wondered once more if tomorrow night she would be able to see the house and her bedroom from the ship. She had made a flag and stuck it on a branch of the paw-paw tree outside her window. She had done it for Janake, but Janake too seemed to have vanished into thin air. For a long time she lay in this way, looking at the stars, until finally she fell asleep and sometime between midnight and dawn she dreamt her grandfather pushed aside the mosquito net and kissed her good-bye. Sighing, she turned over.

Morning came; the morning of departure. Issued to them with ease, fresh as a newly laundered sheet, clean and ordinary. There was nothing in its arrival that suggested any significance, nothing to prepare them for such a momentous moment. Too late, the day had arrived without fanfare or thunderclap. England, that strange amorphous shadow, had become a reality at last. Sita stared blankly at the sky, joined now so seamlessly to the sea, wondering if it had always looked this way. The morning lay before her in exquisite beauty. Blue softened the water, reflecting the light as never before, piercing and very lovely. She gazed out through her window, a stranger already in her own home, dimly wondering how all the years of her life had led so inexorably to this moment. She was thinking about Kunal. She had not stopped thinking of him. She did not expect him to ring. Realistically, she could not expect to hear news until she reached England.

‘I’ll try to telephone, before you go,’ he had said. ‘Before you leave, I want to hear your voice one more time.’

‘Don’t promise,’ she had told him quickly, ‘in case you can’t. I’ll write. Every time the boat docks, they post the letters. It will take weeks to get to you, but I’ll write.’

Kamala was calling. Breakfast was ready. It was no longer possible to bear the dazzling light coming in through the bedroom window. I am nearly on the other side of saying good-bye, thought Sita.

Alice avoided looking at the sea. Instinct made her turn away, strangely restless to be gone, to be done with the waiting. The servant opened the shutters; there was the smell of milk rice.

‘Has Janake come yet?’ Alice asked sleepily.

‘Not yet, baby,’ the servant smiled, coming in, pulling back the mosquito net around the cot that Alice had slept in since she had been born. Suddenly she felt stripped of identity. The wardrobe door was open and in its mirror she could see the stag’s head with the bowler hat still on it. If she opened the door a little wider the sea swung into view, sun-lit and very clear all the way to the end of the horizon.

A good day for sailing,’ she told herself, just as she had heard the grown-ups say.

The wardrobe door moved and the sea and the sky and the large black spider on the edge of the ceiling tilted out of balance. Somewhere there was another house and another school with a new best friend. But she couldn’t imagine it looking any different from this one. Her grandmother was waiting with a breakfast of the milk rice and half a paw-paw and some fleshy rambutan. An auspicious meal for a journey. Soon, Esther and Dias arrived noisily to say good-bye. They had presents.

‘Here, I’ve bottled you some of your favourite seeni sambal to take on your journey,’ Dias said, handing Alice a jar of her famous vegetable pickles.

‘You won’t get this in the UK, men. This is to my own devised recipe, child. Your mama will be glad of it, too, especially if any of you fellows get sea-sick!’

Alice had no idea why they should get sea-sick.

‘I’ve got you something, too,’ Esther was saying, and she handed Alice a record cover.

‘It’s my favourite Elvis cover, child.’

Esther, Alice noted, was still trying to be grown-up.

But she was being kind.

‘I’ve got two, so you can have one. And if they sell records in England, you could buy one and put it in this cover.’

Nobody knew if they sold records in England, but Alice thanked Esther, anyway.

‘Here, let me write on it,’ Esther said, snatching it back.

And she wrote in small curvy letters: Be good, sweet maid, love from Esther.

‘Wait, I’ll write something too,’ Esther’s mother said.

And she wrote, Refuse to promise anything you cannot do, from Aunty Dias.

Alice took the record cover from her. Then, in the awkward silence that followed, she picked up the jar of pickle from the table. Esther and her mother watched her. The day shifted from one warm tone to another. Orange blossom and temple flowers drifted in from the garden as with a slight squeak the gate opened and Janake came rushing in. He had been cycling with only one hand, he told them, grinning.

‘Look what I’ve found you!’

He gave Alice a small turquoise tin with a lid that wouldn’t open. Esther giggled, covering her mouth.

‘What on earth would she want with that on the ship!’

Janake scowled.

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Janake!’ Alice cried, and she threw her arms around him and hugged him. ‘I love it!’

Janake moved away uneasily, glancing at Esther, but Esther had gone to talk to the grown-ups.

‘I can’t stand her,’ Janake whispered. ‘I’m not going to talk to her when you’ve gone.’

‘I’ll write to you,’ Alice whispered back, ‘when I’m on board ship. And I’ll send you things, too. Will you wave tonight?’

Janake nodded.

‘We’re all going to stand by the rocks and wave at six o’clock, so make sure you’re looking!’

From inside the house there was a noise and the servant gave a cry. She had broken the clay pot with water in it and Kamala was scolding her.

‘Oh my God!’ Janake said. ‘Let’s go and see.’

Alice felt a small shiver run down her spine.

‘Don’t worry, child,’ Aunty Dias was saying. ‘It wasn’t very full and the water fell near the door, so it doesn’t matter.’

‘Is May meeting you at the jetty?’

‘How are the newly weds?’

Everyone was talking at the same time as if to cover up the awkwardness. A neighbour had placed a devil offering across the road. The woven basket looked fresh and tempting. It was filled with mangoes and ambarella fruit and spilt over with rice and freshly fried fish. Beside it was another basket of cut flowers.

‘There are new people coming into this place,’ Aunty Dias said in a loud complaining voice. ‘Everything is changing. Yesterday there were two army trucks in Main Street. And they say the curfew will be back now because of the general elections. You know, Sita, it’s a good thing you’re leaving.’

‘How are you feeling? About going, I mean?’ Esther wanted to know. ‘Are you feeling anything?’

‘No,’ Alice said.

‘What a stupid question,’ Janake scoffed.

He looked suddenly in a bad mood. But it was true, Alice couldn’t feel anything. Janake turned to her.

‘Thanks for the bike,’ he said shyly. ‘I’ll look after it till you get back.’

Alice nodded. Her chest felt tight and she was finding it difficult to breathe.

‘You weren’t meant to find it till we left,’ she said faintly.

‘It’s nine o’clock,’ Bee called. ‘I’ll put the luggage in the car.’

‘Thatha, I think I’ll leave this other holdall. We’ve got too much stuff,’ Sita told him.

‘Is this war definitely coming?’ Alice asked Janake.

‘Maybe. But I’m coming to visit you in the UK anyway,’ Janake told her. ‘Just wait and see. I’ll turn up one day!’

The bravado in his voice did not escape her and she wanted desperately to say something more to him. She wanted to ask him what this war would be like, whether he and her grandparents would be safe. She wanted to assure him that she did not want to leave, but she seemed to have lost her voice and in any case instinct told her it was too late for such sentiments. She looked at Janake as he stood squinting anxiously at her and saw with horror that she was going to miss him too.

The morning with its mists rolling in from the sea, its fishermen shouting, ‘malu, malu,’ and the rush and panic of getting to the station, finding a seat and forcing the window open, was too absorbing to leave room for anything else. They snatched at words.

‘Have you packed your new Enid Blyton book?’ ‘Don’t forget to look out to sea tonight and wave.’ ‘We’ll write as soon as we’re in London. In twenty-one days!’ ‘Look after yourselves,’ the grandparents said, smiling funny lopsided smiles. Standing close together, not like her grandparents at all but like an old married couple. Bee and Kamala left their hugs until the last possible moment.

‘There’s a new merry-go-round on the hill,’ was all there was time for Alice to notice before, with a shrill whistle, the train began to move.

Suddenly, when it was too late, when their faces had begun to move away from her, she started to cry. And as the faces on the platform passed swiftly by, she saw, also, that all around and beneath her was the sea, huge and wide and filled with sunlight. In a few hours they would be on it.

There was nothing for it. Sink or swim, thought Sita grimly, her arms and legs aching as she climbed. They had said their good-byes to May and Namil and Uncle Sarath. Neither sister had cried. Something had stuck in both of them, stopping them from doing so. The noise and the stifling heat, Sita’s tiredness and tension were inexorably caught up in a turmoil of confusion. She saw that May looked well. Her honeymoon was over, but there was still the excitement of the house being built and then there was the choosing of furniture to come.

‘Now then, darling,’ May told her niece, ‘mind you look after Mama for me. She’s all the sister I’ve got.’

And that too was it; once again the swiftness of departure was what they remembered. All around them people were crying. Sita watched impassively; she could not cry. Not even when they were on the launch, moving unsteadily across the bay, not even when May waved and called her name was she able to respond. The small motor boat took them out to the furthest tip of the sun-washed harbour, close to the breakwater. Then the boatman helped them, one by one, on to the narrow gangway. Children screamed as they stood up and the boat rocked madly. Before them, thin and insubstantial, was the rope ladder, each rung seeming higher than their legs could ever reach. Would it hold their weight? The sun beat relentlessly on Sita’s back and her head throbbed as she followed Alice higher and higher up the gangway. Reaching, it seemed, for the sky.

‘Hold tight, Alice,’ she said faintly. ‘Hold tight.’

Everything happened too quickly. I wasn’t ready to leave; there were things I forgot to say. And now, she thought, it will last forever. They reached the top of the gangway. Below was a mass of swaying, saried women, their oiled heads bent in concentration, their voices a sad chant of farewell. In front of them were the neat dark ankles, the bright patterned silk of an unknown sari, fluttering like a useless flag in the breeze. And far beneath them was the sea, turquoise and restless. There was no going back.

Hands reached out to help them up the last steep step and she saw humanity hanging out of every porthole, from every deck. Ribbons floated down into the sea, someone was flying a kite. The strange unfamiliar smell of diesel mixed with the salty air made Sita nauseous. From somewhere inside the ship they heard the faint strains of the national anthem, its sad sweet melody, haunting and full of all that they loved, all they were leaving. The music, heard only at state funerals and other such occasions, drenched them in sorrow.

Alice,’ Sita cried in a panic, ‘where are you?’

But Alice was beside her, her small face streaked with grime, her mouth firmly shut. In silence, somehow they managed to find their cabin. It was in the bowels of the ship.

‘C Deck, next stop the engine room,’ said the steward jokingly, pointing them towards the door.

Almost instantly they noticed the deep bass vibration, the vast hum of the engines. Staring at their small cabin in dismay they saw that this was all they were to have for the next twenty-one days. Two bunk beds, the sea, and each other. They made their way back up on deck again, negotiating the maze of stares, wrinkling their noses at the unfamiliar smells, staggering a little as the ship creaked gently. Pushing doors almost too heavy for them both, they went out into the fresh sea air to feel the warm breeze of their home and the painfully broken light. In the distance were the bare slabs of white-hot sand. Beyond was a coconut grove, sharply defined against the extraordinary sun. And it was then, suddenly, that Alice wanted passionately to get off the boat. She had had enough. Sita found a space to lean out over the edge, but the harbour and May and Namil were no longer distinguishable. In this way, slowly, with a creaking heaviness of metal and hearts, the Fairsea inched its way out of the harbour towards the open sea. Ahead was the pilot ship guiding them as far as the breakwater before it too turned back home. It was how Alice became aware, watching the island’s sandy beaches recede, its dense coconut palms vanish, that the raised voices around her were broken by another, unfamiliar sound. The sound went on and on, rhythmically, unnoticed by everyone in the confusion of the moment, but as she listened Alice heard it clearly and was rendered speechless. For it was the soft swish of the waves as heard from a boat, pulling them away from the land where they had been born, washing over her mother weeping.

Night came. A night with no tomorrows, Bee thought, standing at the water’s edge. Far away in the distance was a ship that moved flatly on the horizon like a child’s drawing. Was it them? Was it their ship?

‘Eat a little,’ Kamala said. ‘Try.’

His heart was hanging on its hinges. Broken. They dared not speak for fear of conjuring up the evil spirits of the day. Should they have gone to the harbour? Should they have stood and waved like May? I can bring nothing of this back, thought Bee. Every room seemed to describe an unfinished act. The presence that had filled the empty spaces of the house, that presence, had gone. May and Namil arrived, as planned, with tales of the last moments. As though it had been an execution, Bee thought.

‘No, Father,’ his daughter, the only one left to him now, said. ‘It happened so quickly, they hardly had time to say good-bye and they were bundled on the launch. You would have upset yourself needlessly. As it was, no one cried.’ Bee disagreed silently. It would have been better if they had cried. Better then than later, with no one to comfort them. May sighed. She could see her father was beating himself with a stick.

‘How will Sita manage Alice?’ Kamala worried. ‘She has hardly recovered herself.’

‘Stanley will be at the other end to meet her,’ May soothed.

That’s generous of him, Bee thought, bitterly. But he didn’t say it. And the child, he had wanted to ask May. What about the child? Tell me? Did she grieve? But he couldn’t ask that, either.

‘She sent you this,’ May said, knowing how it was for him.

And she gave him a drawing Alice had done in the train, going up to Colombo. It was a self-portrait.

‘Wait, I’ll put the date on it,’ Bee muttered, going out to his studio.

They let him go, nodding at each other, saying nothing.

So now it was night. Bee’s grief walked silently with him along the narrow spit of beach. He was too old for grand demonstrations or declarations. He knew when he loved and he knew about those things from which he would never recover. Here she had grown, a child with only small hints of what she could one day become. He would walk with that small child for what was left of his own life, here on this beach. Every night. Across the water a sickle moon trod a pathway of light and suddenly a sound carried across the breeze from the next bay. It was the long, lonely hoot of the night train as it rushed along the line. How often he had heard it. But tonight the sudden sound, this silhouette through the trees, was Bee’s undoing. It was how Janake, wheeling the precious bicycle Alice had given him, hurrying to make a shortcut through the trees, found him, leaning against an empty catamaran.

‘I knew what it would be like,’ he told Janake, finally. ‘Yet knowing doesn’t make it any easier.’

Janake scuffed the sand with his bare foot. As it happened he had been on his way to see Mr Fonseka. The doctor, unable to leave his surgery for the moment, had given him a message to deliver. Janake had been about to blurt the message out, but Bee Fonseka was too upset. How can I tell him? Janake thought. I can’t, not now. When Mr Fonseka had composed himself and Janake had promised to come for an English lesson later in the week, he said good-bye. Guiltily he rode off without saying a word.

‘You tell him, Amma,’ Janake begged his mother. ‘How could I say Uncle Kunal had died in the car?’

On their very first night on the boat, the passengers were given strange things to eat. Italian food, long slimy strings of a substance Alice had never seen before. Sita did not want food, all she wanted was to stay in the cabin and write a letter to Kunal. She wanted it to be ready for when the purser made the collection.

You go,’ she told Alice. ‘You know where the dining room is, go and eat with the other children.’

But the food was inedible. Like worms, Alice announced at the children’s table, making everyone snigger, and the Swiss girl sitting next to her, vomit.

‘Why can’t we have some rice?’ Alice demanded of the steward.

‘There’s no rice where you’re going,’ he sneered. ‘Better get used to proper food, you little savage!’

The Swiss girl had to go to bed.

‘See what you did,’ the steward said crossly, clearing up the sick.

Several other children left the table. Alice didn’t care. She wasn’t hungry either. She took one of the strange-smelling orange fruit and went on deck to wave to her grandfather and Janake and Esther as she had promised.

Later, one of the staff knocked on the door of their cabin to complain to her mother, telling her Alice had been disruptive at supper. Sita regarded her daughter with a glazed look after the man had gone.

‘This isn’t like you Alice,’ she said helplessly.

Sita looked hot and unhappy with the thought of the days and nights yet to be spent in the darkness of the cabin. When she had finished scolding her daughter in this half-hearted way, she placated her with a spoonful of the precious vegetable pickle from one of her grandmother’s carefully packed jars.

After tonight,’ she told Alice, ‘there are only twenty days left before we’ll be on dry land again.’

The morning after his family had begun their voyage, Stanley awoke with a feeling of well-being. It was Monday, almost three months since his startling arrival in London and at last he had a proper job. He had been temping, washing dishes, addressing envelopes and generally odd-jobbing. Sunlight streamed in through the thin brown curtains of his bedroom, falling on the drab, peeling wallpaper, the yellow eiderdown, the oddly heavy furniture. For a moment he wondered where he was as he stared at the painting of a woodland scene on the wall. What leaves there were on the trees were brown. Autumn, thought Stanley, half in a dream, and he remembered Sita reciting a poem about autumn to him when he had first broached the subject of their migration to England. A picture of Sita swam before his eyes and he sat up with a start. It was seven o’clock and he was due to report at Rajah’s office at eight thirty.

‘Don’t be late,’ had been Rajah’s words to him as they had parted.

Last night Stanley had again had dinner with his brother. Still disorientated, he had been determined to cook something for himself in his new home, but Rajah had been insistent.

‘I’m going to take you to an Indian restaurant, men. It’s very cheap and I want you to meet some of the people there.’

‘Indian?’ Stanley had asked, startled.

This was a new idea. Rajah had given him a peculiar look.

‘We’ve all got brown skins so far as the English are concerned,’ he explained patiently. ‘Forget about the rules at home. They don’t apply here.’

He had laughed at the look on Stanley’s face.

‘You’ve got a lot to learn, Putha!’ he had cried. ‘And you’ve got to learn fast, before that Singhalese wife of yours arrives.’

Rajah had been driving at the time, having picked Stanley up from the house at Cranmer Gardens. They were heading over the river.

‘Why you wanted to saddle yourself with a bloody Singhalese woman was one thing. But to book her a passage to this place at the same time was sheer madness. What were you thinking?’

‘Her father insisted on it,’ Stanley said lamely. And I thought it might help.’

‘Help? In what way, for God’s sake? When has a Singhalese ever helped a Tamil!’

His brother turned towards him, roaring with laughter.

‘Christ, Rajah, keep your eyes on the road!’ Stanley cried nervously.

After their meal, Rajah had taken Stanley to a meeting at the house of a Tamil friend. Stanley had been surprised to see so many Tamils gathered together under one roof. Arguing about the state of Sri Lanka.

‘There’s a civil war about to break out, men,’ a dark Jaffna man was saying belligerently. ‘Just wait a while and you will see. The Singhalese shits have a lesson coming bloody soon!’

Stanley sat in a corner of the room, listening. A man handed him a can of beer. The man from Jaffna was shouting again. Stanley sighed. He knew the type. There were plenty of them in Colombo, stirring up trouble, aggravating an already delicate situation. Why was his brother mixing with such people when at home he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so?

‘We need money for weapons and for training in the use of those weapons.’

‘We have to help our people and stand by them,’ another man said.

At the end of the meeting, a tray was passed around. Everyone placed their donations on it. Then a piece of paper was given to Stanley for his name and address. How much would he be able to donate each month?

‘He’s got no money,’ Rajah said, waving the tray away. ‘He’s still temping. Wait until he gets the permanent job I’m organising for him!’

The woman in charge of the collection smiled at him before turning to Stanley. He saw a flash of gold in her teeth.

‘Is it true your wife is Singhala?’ she asked.

Stanley had been taken aback and had nodded uneasily. It was some weeks since he had last felt uncomfortable about having a Singhalese wife. He had thought all that was behind him.

‘Never forget your brothers,’ the woman said quietly.

‘But is a civil war the answer?’ Stanley had asked timidly, surprising himself.

The island and all its dysfunctional problems were less important, somehow. He looked around for Rajah, but his brother had moved off and was deep in conversation elsewhere. Stanley saw him take out his cheque book.

‘Pay next time,’ the woman with the gold teeth said.

She was smiling at him, but he sensed her watchfulness too.

‘Would you like to come to my temple at the Oval next week? For prayers?’

‘I’m a Catholic,’ Stanley had said.

The woman had fixed him with her eyes for a moment longer. Then she smiled again.

‘You might not always be a Catholic,’ she said. ‘And I can tell there is some sort of problem in your marriage. Your wife’s holding you back.’

‘How d’you know?’ Stanley asked, mildly surprised.

‘Anay! I can tell from your face. You’re struggling a little, hah? Your wife isn’t religious either. Come to the temple, just for once, before she arrives. It will do you good, you’ll see, make you very prosperous.’

Stanley didn’t know how to respond to this. The woman was not good-looking, she was too thickset for that, but her eyes were arresting. Half frightened, half mesmerised, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘have this.’

She pushed a small packet into his hand.

‘Put some of this on your tongue every evening. After you have taken your bath. Say a prayer to the Bhagavan. He’ll hear you, I promise.’

Still Stanley didn’t answer. The woman laughed.

‘What’s your name?’

‘They call me Manika. Come to the temple, if you want. Next Thursday.’

And she went.

In the car going back, the small packet tucked inside his coat pocket, Stanley had been quiet. Rajah was talking enthusiastically about the evening.

‘It’s our duty to help other Tamils,’ he said. ‘These are our people.’

Stanley agreed, only half-listening. He was thinking of Sita. She would be arriving soon. The thought of her filled him with dismay. What, aside from survival, had kept them together? Somewhere between the mountains of Greece and the Mediterranean, the intensity had gone out of his life in Colombo. He had shed his anger like a skin.

‘Have you thought of divorce?’ Rajah asked slyly, taking him by surprise.

Stanley looked at him. What had he said?

‘Come on, men, don’t look so shocked. What’s the matter with you? In this country anything is possible. I’ve been telling you for years.’

But later, back in his own flat, Stanley felt less certain. The packet, when he looked at it, turned out to be ash. Holy ash? wondered Stanley. Before he went to bed, he put some experimentally on his tongue and closed his eyes. There were unknown expenses ahead. The future was full of uncertainties. Perhaps the ash, holy or not, would bring him good luck. He had no idea what he wanted.

This morning, with the thin sunlight streaming in, he considered all of this. Swinging his feet on to the cold carpet, he got out of bed and hurried into the bathroom. He needed to get to Rajah’s office. At last he had a proper job and could give up the temping. The sun through the window was not bright but it no longer felt as cold as when he had first arrived. He thought of the woman with the ash. She had probably been a servant in Colombo. In Ceylon, associating with such a woman would have been a huge social taboo. Here, such things were of no importance. This thought too was exciting. Staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, whistling, he considered his prospects. He had entirely forgotten his hurt over the Swedish girl.

Days passed. Travelling the ocean, chased by monsoons, sending messages to her grandfather in the bottles she threw overboard, Alice felt the time pass slowly.

I miss you…I want to come back…Please write to them and say you’ve changed your mind and I can live with you.

The seas had changed colour as they travelled, from an inky-blue ocean, deep and unfathomable, to the skittish, calm Mediterranean, but still Alice threw her bottles almost daily overboard.

‘If the Purser sees you doing that,’ one of the other children said, ‘you’ll be in trouble.’

Alice didn’t care. She needed to talk to her grandfather. She had never been away from him for this long.

‘He’s coming to rescue me,’ she said, sticking her chin out in the way that she knew he liked.

She wished she could hear his laugh.

‘Don’t be silly,’ the girl told Alice disapprovingly. ‘The bottles will never get back there!’ Alice ignored her and redoubled her efforts.

Send a telegram, she instructed. We’ll be in Port Said soon, send a letter. Tell them to send me back on another ship.

‘You’re mad,’ the girl scoffed. Anyway, I don’t care, I’m going home.’

And she skipped off to find someone else to play with.

My dearest Kunal, Sita wrote, sitting on her bunk.

All my other letters will be posted from Port Said. How many letters? I hear you ask. Maybe you will even laugh. (How I wish I could hear your laugh.) Well, I have to confess to having written seven! I have got to know you as I wrote. All the things I was unable to say that night I have said. Here in this little cabin, our home for almost twenty-one days, I feel as if I’ve summoned you up like a genie from a lamp. This is what happens to people who do not fit in. Ah, Kunal, if only you were really with me now, how different the seas would look. We would watch the flying fish together and the storms. The sunrises and the sunsets. We will be in Gibraltar soon. Alice wants to go ashore at the next port, but I can’t bear to. All I want to do is to get to England, to get to the address where I’m hoping all your letters will be waiting for me.

With the first brushstroke of evening the moon slipped blood red over the sea. The last of the light seeped across the beach as though it were a line of watercolour. Everywhere was silent, for there would be no more trains tonight. The railway line gleamed like a silver fish. Coconut palms cast thin shadows across the rocks and the slight breeze smoothed the black silky water. It was as it had always been with the land and the sea and sky as one, joined invisibly. The sea pulsated like a heart. His heart. Cicadas vibrated in Bee’s ears, lamenting his losses, while the moon-polished water brimmed over with unspoken memories. The land had lost something precious; the vast starlit sky had lost it too. And I am bereft, thought Bee. It was unrecoverable. He would never again have what other people took for granted. Continuity in old age, that was what he had lost. What became of a country that sent its people to the four corners of the world, indifferent to their fate, uncaring of the history they carried within them? Bee could not imagine. What would be left here in this paradise when all that was good and brave was slaughtered, and all those who cared were broken and dismissed? It was beyond his understanding. No longer able to rationalise this bereavement, he saw his eldest daughter and his only grandchild as distant, mythical creatures, standing on the prow of a ship, facing a new world not of their making, not of their people. Earth would be broken, he feared, lives too, in the making of their new home. His heart wept for them, it would go on weeping until his life was over. He could not see how, in what way, they could belong there. Someone, in some future time will tell of this. Not now, not in my lifetime, not perhaps for many years to come, he thought, but one day this uprooting will be counted. Threading his way back to the house, in the pale glow of the moonlight, he heard the familiar low dull thud, followed soon after by the scream of sirens.