by Roma Tearne
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 they were going to have a boy. A Hindu astrologer told her mother that finally, after five girls, she would have a son.’
It was too late. Jennifer would tell everyone that Alice had wanted the baby to die and then everyone in the class would say she had made a curse. Perhaps, thought Alice in panic, she would be sent to the police.
‘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 again and the talk turned on the events of the day. They were all in shock. Looking around at his family, Bee said very little. He still felt numb from this terrible day. Darkness was encroaching. The servant came in silently and switched on the light. Instantly two large orange-spotted moths flitted in and began to circle around the bulb. Alice and Esther finished eating and went quietly on to the verandah, seeming to be swallowed up by the dark garden. They too were quiet. Bee waited until he was certain they were out of earshot.
‘First let them bury their dead,’ he said, turning back into the room.
I am accepting the inevitable, he thought in silent pain.
‘We must let them go in peace to the UK,’ he told
Kamala.
‘Something more should be done,’ May said, angrily. ‘Someone should be told, for God’s sake! He should be struck off, Amma. How can we stand by like this and do nothing?’
May was crying again, but this time she was angry as well.
Later, when the visitors had left and Kamala had coaxed her, Alice went without fuss to bed. But she could not sleep. A full moon shone in through her window and once or twice she sat up and looked out at the sea. She could hear the grown-ups out on the verandah now and she could smell tobacco from Bee’s pipe. The low hum of their voices blended with the drone of the insects.
‘How can you?’ Aunt May was asking.
‘We can’t afford the lawyer,’ Kamala said in a low, sad voice.
She sounded as though she too was crying.
Then Alice heard her grandfather tap his pipe against his chair. Until now he had been mostly silent.
‘It isn’t a question of money,’ he said hesitantly, and Alice strained her ears to catch his words. ‘Even if we found the money for the lawyers, and even if the nurse could be called on to testify, who would believe this was done simply because she has a Tamil name? Would anyone believe us? We would be taking on the government doctors. I can’t think of a single lawyer in this country who would want to do that.’
