Brixton Beach. Roma Tearne
the shore and the sea would be bound up with Alice, his first grandchild.
Things changed rapidly after that. He changed. All that had been falling apart began to reassemble. Kamala watched him indulgently, secretly breathing a sigh of relief. May laughed, teasing him. The neighbours became accustomed to his long discourses on the child and the nature of childhood. Her intelligence was soon legendary and had quickly become an established fact in this part of the coast. Bee didn’t care. They could laugh at him as much as they wished, but his painting now began to be influenced by the child’s interests. He stopped the sweeping watercolours of the ocean and began to paint in miniature: small sea plants that grew in cracks, minute white seashells buried on the edges of rocks, fragments of marine life washed up in the monsoon storms, fish scales, raindrops on the edges of a coconut frond. All the things in fact that he had begun to show his new granddaughter. The dealer in Colombo came to visit and liked what he saw. Life in miniature, he called it, and urged Bee to paint more. There was, it appeared, a market for this closely observed minutiae. Bee allowed the dealer to take a few paintings. But mainly he was reluctant to sell this new work, for it felt too private to be seen by others. He re-decorated the room facing the ocean, for before long, Alice was old enough to be left with them. And finally he saw, to his greatest joy, the child wanted to be near him as much as he wanted to see her.
‘Grandpa!’ she cried, as soon as she caught sight of him, waking from a sleep, carried in her mother’s arms, delighting in the sight of him.
Stanley wanted her to speak only English, of course, but somehow both Singhalese and Tamil slipped into her vocabulary. Bee made no comment, the gleam in his eye saying it all. The child could do no wrong. Kamala produced small, dainty cakes whenever a visit was eminent and May, grown tall and very lovely now, embroidered white frocks for her niece.
Time passed slowly as the sea and the old whitewashed house absorbed these moments thirstily. Memories moved lightly against the sun-warmed walls. It was a long golden moment stretching over almost a decade. Sita gave up her job as a teacher and began to write a small column for the woman’s page of the Colombo Daily News. An uneasy existence between Singhalese and Tamils existed lulling them into a false security. She wrote her articles under a pen-name and Alice, without anything being discussed, was taught to use her mother’s Singhalese maiden name. By the time she was ready to go to school she thought of herself as Alice Fonseka.
Then one night, when Alice was five, Stanley was beaten up on his way back from work and his money stolen. When he arrived home he was bleeding from a wound on his head and his clothes were torn. Luckily Alice had been staying with her grandparents. Sita called for their usual doctor, but he refused to come out, telling her to take her husband to the hospital instead. The police too were indifferent. There was a travelling circus in that part of town, the policeman said, shrugging. Best to keep away from Galle Face for a bit. It would be impossible to find the culprit.
And besides,’ the policeman had said smiling broadly at Sita, taking in the fact that her husband’s name was Tamil, ‘these things happen to everyone. Not just the Tamils. You mustn’t be so sensitive.’
Sita stared back at him, speechless. The men had hurled racist insults at her husband in Singhalese. How could the policeman think this was not a racist attack?
‘Why doesn’t your husband think of going back to Jaffna?’ the officer had suggested.
He sounded reasonable and was, he told her, trying to be helpful. Sita couldn’t believe her ears.
‘I’m doing this because I like the look of you,’ the policeman said, swaggering a little, holding his paunch with both his hands. ‘I’m doing this as a favour, d’you understand?’
When he smiled she had seen the prawn-pink undersides of his heavy lips and shuddered.
‘My husband is not from Jaffna,’ she had shouted, ‘not even his relatives came from Jaffna.’
The policeman had stared at her suggestively, warningly Afterwards she felt violated.
‘He asked me what a nice Singhalese girl like me was doing married to a Tamil,’ Sita had told her parents when she came to collect Alice.
Bee, listening grimly, wanted to go to the chief constable in Mount Lavinia, but neither Sita nor Kamala would let him make a fuss.
‘Everything’s fine here, Father,’ Sita had said, shaking her head, calming down a little. ‘Don’t make trouble. It’s safe for Alice here and for May, too. Leave it.’
So against his better judgement he had consoled himself with the fact that it was just one incident. One corrupt policeman in a disturbed country was not as bad as all that.
The Sea Serpent emerged through the trees, lumbering towards the station and breaking into Bee’s thoughts. He smiled as with a grinding of metal the train came to a halt. A moment later Alice leapt out at him followed tiredly by Sita.
‘Hello, birthday girl!’ he cried, kissing the top of her head and taking his daughter’s bag.
‘I can’t stay very long,’ Sita warned. ‘I’ve got to catch another train back this evening.’
‘Have you brought the car? Is Aunty May with you? And is Esther coming? And Janake?’ asked Alice.
‘Steady on,’ Bee said, talking with his pipe in his mouth in the way she loved. ‘Now you’re such a great age you must try to act a little bored. It’s more grown up that way.’
‘But I have been bored!’ cried Alice, her eyes like the polish of water on wet stones.
‘She talks too much in class,’ Sita said, irritated. ‘It was so bad today, her teacher made her sit by herself. No, Alice, it isn’t funny,’ she added in warning.
Alice grinned, wrinkling her nose. Later on, when she had her grandfather all to herself, she would tell him what her day had really been like.
‘Why go back tonight?’ Bee asked, helping his daughter into the waiting car.
Alice could not wait. She sucked in the air like a lollypop and shot straight into the back wishing her mother would simply leave quickly. The back seat of the car had the familiar smell of warm leather and love. There were other smells too, of sea, sand and grease and long, younger days sitting on tedious journeys in the heat. It held the memory of sticky Lanka lime and hot winds blowing and can—I-eat-the patties-yet whines. The sea was out of sight for the moment, screened by a tangle of bougainvillea, but still its presence remained powerful. Sea sounds were everywhere, tossing about and fragmented by the breeze.
‘So,’ Bee said wryly, glancing over his shoulder, for she had been silent for at least a minute, ‘how’s the birthday girl? Asleep?’
He pretended to look stern and Alice squealed with pleasure. She felt as though she was sucking on a sherbet dib-dab, or running with a kite. Excitement made her want to shout and wriggle her toes all at the same time but her mother was talking and so, impatiently, she tied a string to her pleasure and reined it sharply in. The sound of her mother’s sombre voice always deflated her a little. Bee glanced at her in the mirror. Then he coaxed the old Morris Minor slowly up the hill. Tantalising glimpses of the beach followed them.
‘Esther and her mother want to see you,’ Bee said.
His daughter had leaned back and closed her eyes.
‘That’s nice,’ she said, shutting out the view.
A man with a white loincloth looped over his legs was drawing a catamaran across the sand. Alice blinked; unknown to her, the image fixed itself in her mind forever. Two sun-blackened boys were collecting coconuts in a sack. In the high bright daze they appeared silhouetted like matchstick men. The car climbed up Station Road with a sound like an old cough tearing at its throat. It passed the small kade where Bee bought his tobacco. Bougainvillea choked the stone walls all along the way. Magenta and white; too bright to look at without squinting. A golden-fronted leaf-bird flashed past, heading for a canopy of hibiscus bushes, leaving a searing after-burn of colour, and