The afternoon dragged on. The sounds of the cicadas filled the air and the mosquitoes too were back with a vengeance. But there was still no sign of the girl. They both began to listen out for the click of the gate. Theo had found a place to hang the paintings, away from the light, and Sugi took a hammer and put them up. But still, there was no sign of her. What had happened to her? wondered Theo uneasily.
‘Don’t worry, Sir,’ said Sugi soothingly. ‘My friend said Mrs Mendis is very upset the boy is leaving. She’s probably given her some work to do.’ The afternoon was nearly over.
‘Perhaps I should go over there,’ said Theo.
‘Sir,’ said Sugi, and he shook his head. ‘It will do no good and it might even do harm. She will come. As soon as she can, she will come, I am certain.’
Towards evening, just before it became dark, Theo slipped out to the beach. Sugi watched him go.
‘Don’t be too long, sir,’ he said. ‘There’s talk of a curfew. If you see the searchlights, come back immediately. These army types won’t stop to look. They simply shoot, you know.’
As always at this time the beach was deserted. Theo was trying to light his pipe, bending away from the wind, when he saw her. Hurrying across to him in headlong flight, running heedlessly along the empty stretch of sand. Carrying her
mother’s wails of superstitions, chased by unseen demons, straight into his arms. And for the first time, as he held her like a child, relieving her of her fear, he saw how much she had begun to depend on him. And he saw also from her eyes that she was beginning to understand, too sharply and too finely perhaps, the many things that had not worried her until now. At last she saw what there was to be afraid of in this war. And he felt his own feelings for her break open and flower in some unbearable and inexplicable way.
Mirror dust fell everywhere, sparkling between them. Looking at her face he thought, once again with amazement, how it was that in so short a time, she seemed both older and yet so young. And then he knew, without a shadow of doubt, that he could never live in England again. So he laughed at her, teasing her about her mirror-fears, holding her as though she was a child woken from a nightmare, telling her it was all nonsense.
‘Will you come back?’ she asked anxiously, reading his mind a little. ‘No one will stop you from coming back, will they?’ Thinking with dread of his trip to London, for the premiere of his film. ‘You
will
be allowed back in, no?’
They were sitting side by side on a broken catamaran. Half of it had sunk in the sand, brown-whiskered coconut husks filled its broken base, weather-beaten planks were all that were left of its seats. Her bare legs were close to his. One worn straw sandal had burrowed into the sand and come undone. He bent and fastened the strap, his hands fumbling and unfamiliar in their new task, brushing the traces of fine grains that clung to her leg. He felt her tremble and he knew she was thinking that he had never touched her in this way before. And all the things he had held in check, all the happiness of the past few days, gathered with great sweetness in that touch, of his hand on her skin.
‘I will always come back,’ he said fiercely, placing his hand
against her face. ‘You must never doubt that. If anything happens, if my visa is delayed, or the trouble worsens here, or the flights are cancelled, you must
not
worry. You must remember that I have told you I
will
come back. No matter how long it will take I
will
come back. I can’t live away from you now. You must take no notice of the news,’ he added, with the new urgency he had begun to feel. ‘And promise me you will paint while I am away.’ And he had kissed her again, for he could not bear the look on her face.
She had gone back then, to listen to her mother’s complaints, with the caress of his hand on her legs, her red dress fluttering like a flag in the breeze, trailing the mist coming in from the sea, leaving the night to descend. Leaving the beach to him.
Walking back, Theo heard the sound of police sirens in the distance, rising and falling in time to the rhythmic gnawing of the sea.
On the edge of Aida Grove, on a slight incline not far from Sumaner House was an area where coconut trees would not grow. The earth was bare and wasted, without grass, without bushes, without life. There was nothing there except a lone straggling tamarind tree. Once this patch of land had been part of a larger grove of coconuts. It had belonged to the owners of Sumaner House, but with time, neglect and some erosion it had become common land, useless and uncultivated. Superstition abounded. Local legend had it that long ago a servant girl was ravished by a wandering shaman, here in this spot, and then left for dead. Eventually, according to the story, after many days of searching, the girl’s distraught father found her body. His grief was so terrible that the gods, pitying the girl, turned this once fertile grove into barren land. Later on the place was used for human sacrifice. One evil deed precipitated others, and this
became a spot avoided by most people. Cattle would not graze, children would not fly their kites and no one walked here after dark. Occasionally, in the hope of changing the atmosphere, the locals would offer
pujas
, prayers to the gods. But to no avail, Aida Grove would never become popular. In recent times the army had tried to make it their own, parking their trucks and using it as a lookout post, staring at the ships through their binoculars, but Aida Grove defeated even them, and after a while they too stopped coming. Only Vikram frequented the place, idly observing the votive offerings, the stray soldiers, the local carrion. Sometimes he would go to Aida Grove in the hottest hours of the afternoon simply to sit under the tamarind tree and watch the dappled light as it flickered on the ground. He was drawn to the place without knowing why. At seventeen he was the size of a fully-grown man. In spite of everything that had happened to him, he thrived. Such was the virulence of youth; such was the ability of unhappiness to grow. These days he kept busy in unexplained ways. He was still waiting for Gerard to give him his next task. But although he had returned to the town, and although someone else was helping the army with their murder inquiries, Gerard told him things were held up for the moment.
‘Patience, patience,’ Gerard had said. ‘I’ll let you know in a few weeks’ time. When the Chief sends his orders. Now stop pestering me and circulate around the town, will you.’
One evening, as he walked home full of arrack, Vikram heard the usual sound of temple chants filling the air. The sounds floated across Aida Grove and the sky, he noticed, was filled with hundreds of small insects. There was hardly a breeze, the heat lay heavy and close to the ground. In some parts of the island, as Vikram was aware, in places where there was no curfew, Deepavali, the festival of light, was being celebrated
once more. When they had been alive Vikram’s family had always celebrated Deepavali. Vikram staggered on. Huge, blue magpies chattered a warning in the tamarind tree. The darkness grew stronger. Inside Sumaner House the servant woman Thercy had switched off the naked electric bulb in the kitchen. There had been no news from Vikram’s guardian for months now. Thercy had given up wondering if he would ever return. He still paid her wages and he still sent money to Vikram. Everyone was content with the arrangement, so what did she care? All evening police sirens had been screaming. Fighting had broken out further up the coast. Tomorrow, thought Thercy, she would go into the town and meet her friend Sugi. He would know the latest news. Vikram was nowhere in sight. She imagined he was somewhere in the town getting drunk as usual. Thercy had no control over him. It was late, so, turning off the lights, all but the one on the veranda, she retired to bed.
Meanwhile, Vikram paused at the edge of Aida Grove. Something was different about it tonight. At first he couldn’t think what it was. The light from the veranda shone faintly on the tamarind tree. Something was swinging from its highest branch. The movement caught Vikram’s eye. He looked across the length of the tree trunk and saw the thing hung awkwardly, like a broken doll, swinging in the slight breeze. Slowly, making no sound, Vikram walked towards the tree. What appeared to be a giant pendulum moved backwards and forwards, swinging to an invisible beat. In the darkness, rocking gently, it appeared like an image from a painting.
In the dead of night, before the carrion came, when the air had cooled slightly and the dawn was still some way off, someone took the body down. It was dead-weighted and black-booted, hooded and bound. There were electrodes fixed to the palms of
its hands. The hands were still young. A palmist might have identified the dark lines that crossed and recrossed it. A palmist would have seen the history in its fingers. The life and love that had lodged there once. But no such palmist was present. There was no one to display a single gesture of pity. And in the morning, when the light returned to the tamarind tree, the body had gone. Resurrected perhaps, moved to another place maybe. Blood had been spilt, thought Sugi when he heard, and the earth was soaked with it. Behind the tamarind tree and far away through the coconut grove were broken glimpses of the sea. It was blue like the sky, and the horizon was dotted with ships.
Nothing changed. The sea still scrolled restlessly up the beach. The catamarans remained half buried under the sand. When they could, after the curfew was lifted again, Theo and the girl walked on the beach. For Nulani there were two departures ahead.
‘My brother goes to England in three weeks,’ she told Theo.
He saw she could hardly bear what lay ahead. When would she see her brother again? Theo at least would be back. He tried to comfort himself with this thought, saddened by all that lay ahead for her. Remnants of her superstition had worked on him by some process of osmosis, he now realised. Am I going mad? he wondered uneasily. All this nonsense about broken mirrors; it’s crazy. But he could see very clearly how her life rested on shifting sand. Why had he not seen this before?
Sugi watched his struggle. Sugi was his rock.
‘Don’t worry, Sir,’ he said again, and again as they smoked together.
The generator had broken down again. Bullfrogs croaked but otherwise all was quiet.
‘I will look after her for you. Always.’
They shared the silence.
‘Do you remember when you first walked up the road, Sir, looking for this house?’
He still calls me Sir. That will not change either, thought Theo, his affection lengthening like the shadows.
‘She will be fine, Sir. I will make sure of that, not to worry.’
There was money and a forged passport for the girl, hidden in a secret place.
‘If there is any trouble, with the uncle, with anything, take her to Rohan,’ said Theo in an agony of worry.
Time was passing relentlessly.
‘Sir,’ said Sugi, ‘you must trust me. I will take care of her with my life. She will be fine. You and she are precious to me.’
Theo looked at him; Sugi had never expressed his feelings in quite this way before. His trip was still a month away.
Because of her brother’s imminent departure the girl had stopped painting for the moment. These days she was often needed at home, sewing on buttons, and packing, or labelling the jars of lime pickles. How many jars of pickle could the boy take in his suitcase? wondered Sugi. But he refrained from comment. Since the trip to Colombo, Mrs Mendis kept her daughter occupied most of the time, adding to the girl’s distress. When she could Nulani would escape to walk with Theo along the beach, and Sugi as always watching with his anxious eyes could see: they were getting closer daily. Sugi looked out across the horizon. The sea is full of fish, he thought. And the fruit is ripening in the trees, but still that isn’t enough. Still we fight.
‘Will they have egg hoppers for breakfast in England?’ the girl asked Theo.
‘You
will
see him again,’ Theo told her, understanding in a new and mysterious way what she was thinking.
He had begun to feel the leave-taking of her brother almost
as keenly as she did. Her pain had become a terrible thing for him to watch.
‘Will you take me to England then?’ she asked, and her eyes were very large and dark and full of light in the way children’s eyes are. However much she aged in years to come, he thought, she still would remain beautiful because of them. They were the eyes of someone from another age, deep and wise and very lovely. Oh Christ, how he wanted to take her to England, and to Paris and to Venice. He could not bear to leave. When I return, he decided, determined, I will never leave her again. And one day, I will even take her to see that wretched brother of hers and, when the war is over, I will bring her back home again. For I know her heart will always remain here, in this place, her home. So thought Theo as he watched her tenderly, as she drank the lime juice Sugi still served in the tall glass. So thought Theo watching her anxiously and waiting for the rains to come, marvelling at how only last year she had turned seventeen – so young, yet already it felt as though he had known her for a lifetime.
By Christmas there was to be a general election. From all he could glean, in the brief talks with his agent in London, this war no longer interested the foreign newspapers. Sri Lanka was no longer news these days. It was a shipwrecked land. A forgotten place. Lately, Theo noticed, since the curfew had been lifted, a car headlight crossed the top of the sea road each night. It happened always at nine o’clock, every night, sweeping its beam across the road. But it never came any further and their peace, such as it was, remained for the moment undisturbed.
‘H
OW LONG WILL IT TAKE
,’ she asked him, ‘to get to London?’
Her brother had gone a few weeks earlier, leaving for the airport in the schoolteacher’s car, with his unwavering belief in the new life ahead.
‘Gone to the UK,’ her mother had told everyone proudly, through her tears.
The house had shrunk. And now, another departure hung over Nulani.
‘About a day. From door to door,’ said Theo. ‘Tomorrow, by this time, I will be in the hotel.’
‘And you would have travelled halfway around the world,’ she said in a small voice, picking up his passport and reading the names stamped in it.
‘Frankfurt, Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris, Venice. You have been everywhere,’ she said. ‘And I have only been to Colombo, once!’
Theo, who had been gathering his notes for his tour, his money and his documents, stopped and looked at her. He took her hands in his. They were cold. He had been trying to keep busy but he saw now that it was useless.
‘I’m so much older than you,’ he said finally. ‘It’s hardly surprising. And you will go to all of these places one day, I promise you.
I
will take you, you’ll see.’
She was silent, not looking at him, staring at the patch of sea through the open window. Impassively, accepting. He felt a moment of sickness at the thought of abandoning her. Seagulls circled the sky outside. He thought of how her father left her, not meaning to, but doing so anyway. Then, because he could not bear it, he looked at his watch. In less than an hour he would be gone, sitting on the fast train to Colombo. And he needed to talk to her. He could hear Sugi moving in the kitchen.
‘Let’s go to the catamarans,’ he said quickly.
It was still so early that mist lay in thin patches on the beach. There would be no one about. First her father, then her brother Jim, he thought, and now me. But I shall come back, he reminded himself firmly.
‘Listen to me,’ he said, his hands gentle on her face. ‘You must not worry. I’m coming back. I’ve promised you. I
will
keep my word. Just look after yourself, for me. Will you? And when I get back…’
He hesitated, not knowing how to go on. Her face looked drawn in the faint dawn light. She looked terrified.
‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘Nulani, listen. You know I don’t want to go but…You must not be afraid. The six weeks will go quickly, I promise you.’
Again he hesitated.
‘When I get back…I want to talk to you about something. I want to ask you…’
He didn’t have much time. He couldn’t miss his train. There would not be another one today. But he needed to ask her something.
‘Please, Nulani,’ he said, ‘look at me. Are you listening? I
want us to get married. Would you like that too? Will you be prepared to do this crazy thing? With me?’
He went on smiling at her, hiding his desperation, holding on to her, knowing she was nearly crying, knowing too he could not bear to let her. For he knew that if she did, he would not be able to leave.
When she spoke at last, her voice was carried by the wind and caught up in the roar of a train rushing past. The sun was moving slowly through the mist; a few fishermen were coming in from the night. The air smelt sweetly of sea and sand and old fishing nets and tobacco as he kissed her.
‘Yes,’ she said, faintly. ‘I want it too.’
Sugi squeezed some limes. Then he strained the juice into the tall glass jug and took it out onto the veranda where Nulani was drawing. Almost four days had gone since Theo had left and his absence was like a chasm between them. They had had a brief talk to him on the telephone but the line was bad and most of the time they only heard an echo of their own voices.
‘Don’t worry if you haven’t heard from me,’ Theo had said. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to get a connection.’
They had told him that everything was fine, that there was no trouble.
‘Miss Nulani is here all the time, Sir,’ Sugi had grinned. ‘She’s looking after me in exchange for lime juice! So don’t worry. Just look after yourself
‘And come back soon,’ the girl had said. ‘I have been drawing you from memory. Please come back.’
Afterwards she had been very upset. Sugi had not known what to do. He could see the signs of strain stretch taut against her. She was becoming silent, as she had once been. He told her she should do what she had always done. Each morning,
until Theo returned, she should go into her studio and paint. In this way she could surprise Sir when he returned. Six weeks was not too long, looked at in this way, said Sugi firmly, talking to her as though she was a child.
Thus began a routine. Every morning as soon as she had helped her mother, she went over to the beach house and worked. Her mother no longer complained about her absence. Mrs Mendis too had grown quiet. Life had defeated her. She did not know when she would have word from her son. They did not have a telephone and although Nulani had written a letter there had been no reply as yet. Jim Mendis had vanished, swallowed up by the sky, as far as she could see. There was no longer any purpose to her life. The future held no interest for Mrs Mendis. By now Nulani had stopped going to the convent school. Most of the girls of her age were preparing for marriage, or leaving the country if they could. Those who were serious about their studies had moved to Colombo to a larger school. There was nothing to do except paint. The days crawled on. Soon a whole week had passed and there were only five weeks left.
One afternoon she arrived at the beach house later than usual. Her mother had gone to visit someone in a neighbouring village so she had found she was free. But she was restless. The light was wrong, she said, it was not possible to paint. Seadamp had curled her notebook, she told Sugi, showing him the pages. Her drawings were ruined, she said sadly. Perhaps she could not paint after all. Sugi looked at her. She looked as though she had been crying and there were dark circles around her eyes. He brought out a plate of sweetmeats and some curd and jaggery. Then he sat down on the step and, in order to distract her, he told her a story.
Once long ago, when he was a young man, Sugi told her, he
had wanted to go to America. The idea of a neon life, Pepsi cola and cars seduced him. Once.
‘When I was young I worked for a while in the Mount Lavinia Hotel in Colombo, carrying the bags that had just arrived off the passenger boats. America seemed glamorous in those days, and the women were tall and confident. So healthy-looking,’ he said. ‘Their teeth were large and white, their smiles spelt happiness.’
He had fallen in love with such a one, a woman called Sandy. He thought she might have been older than him. She had had a fiancé in Germany. Sandy had stayed in the hotel for nearly three months waiting for a passage to Europe.
‘During that time we had only four conversations,’ said Sugi. And he smiled at the memory.
‘The first time was when I took her bags to her room. I read the labels on her bag and saw that her name was Miss Sandy Fleming, from Buffalo. I tried to imagine such a place,’ he said. ‘She saw me reading the label and smiled at me.’
He saw that her smile was even-toothed and confident. Such confidence frightened him a little. But it also fascinated him. Then the woman had thanked him and given him a tip. The second time she spoke was a few days later. She was poring over a map but, catching sight of him, she asked him for directions instead, saying that maps were too confusing. She smiled at him again and it was then that he had noticed her eyes.
‘They were like green marbles,’ said Sugi.
He could remember them still. Startled, caught unawares, Sugi had smiled back and Sandy Fleming had touched his arm lightly saying he ought to be coming with her on her trip. He had held the door open and, as she passed through into the blinding sun outside, he smelt the perfume on her skin. Again she touched him, lightly on the cheek.
‘After that I was unable to stop thinking of her,’ Sugi said. ‘I didn’t see her again for ages; my shift changed and I was needed to work in the kitchens.’
Often after he finished work he would loiter in the corridor near to Sandy’s room in the hope of catching sight of her, but she was never around.
‘Then about six weeks later,’ Sugi said, ‘the manager found he was short-staffed. He asked me to serve in the dining room.’
It was late afternoon; most of the guests had retired to their rooms to lie under their ceiling fans until the worst of the heat had passed. Outside, the sea was an unbelievable swimming-pool blue and the sand was bleached white. The breeze masked the blistering heat. Only fools would have ventured out but Sandy was on the terrace, her yellow straw hat providing her with a slight filigreed shade.
‘I went to ask if she would like a drink,’ said Sugi. ‘A Lanka lime, a gin and tonic? You see, I knew how the Americans loved to drink.’
But in reality he had wanted only to talk to her. So he went out with his silver tray, his clothes a white flag in the sun, and he saw that she was crying. He had been about to move away quickly, eyes downcast so as not to intrude, when she turned and, seeing him, began a conversation as though she had left off a moment before.
‘She told me that her fiancé had called off their engagement. She told me he had fallen in love with a German. Imagine that, she said. I didn’t know what to say, so I was silent.’
He had seen that her eyes were smudged and greener than the cat’s-eye gemstones mined in Ratnapura.
‘He prefers Germans!’ she had laughed with heavy sarcasm.
She asked Sugi if he had a girl. She was sure he did for he was such a handsome boy, she told him. And if by any chance
he did not have a girlfriend, she had said, then he should tell her, because she would not like to think of him being wasted. Sugi saw that she was drunk.
Later, in his room in the servant quarters he thought about her, wishing he had not been so tongue-tied.
‘I never asked myself what a woman like her would want with a boy like me,’ he told Nulani.
He did not see her the next day, or the day after that, even though he looked for her everywhere. He asked the chambermaid if the American lady had checked out and found that she was still there but her bed had not been slept in for two nights. The chambermaid wondered why he wanted to know this.
‘I pretended I had found a brooch of hers but the chambermaid was no fool, she told me to hand it in at the office and not have anything to do with the American.’
‘She is a loose woman,’ the chambermaid had said, showing her betel-stained teeth, fanning Sugi’s interest further.
Then late one evening, after he had descended into a state of despair, when he was working on the reception desk, she had come in with a British Army officer in tow. They were laughing noisily, and Sandy was swaying slightly. She asked for her key, looking past Sugi. Much later she called up for a bottle of champagne and when he took it up himself she tipped him, complaining to the manager afterwards that he had looked at her in a manner that was too familiar.
‘Some weeks after,’ said Sugi, ‘I left Colombo. I felt everyone was judging me. I didn’t know if they thought I was a thief or a fool. Or both. So I left and went into domestic service in the south.’
He stopped speaking. In the distance a train thundered by. It was the afternoon express from Colombo. The sun had moved away from the house as he had talked and a cool breeze had
sprung up. All of it had happened so long ago, in the days when the war had been something they had hoped would be avoided. He had been young then and his mother and sisters had constantly tried to find a woman for him. But the planets had been fixed in such a way when he was born that his horoscope revealed them to be in discordant houses, so that it had proved impossible.
‘I seemed to be attracted only to unsuitable women,’ he said wryly. The war and time had eroded his desire, he told Nulani, so that before he realised it, he was too old care any more.
Sugi fell silent. All this had happened long ago. Now his interest lay elsewhere. How many lives does a man have to live before he can finally be at peace? he thought, thinking too of Mr Samarajeeva. These days he wanted only to help Sir. There was something very fine and very noble about Theo Samarajeeva, something that had not been seen in this country for a long time. We are a Buddhist country, thought Sugi, turning things over in his mind. But what has happened to us? Where has our compassion gone? He would do anything for Sir, he knew. Help him in any way. Before he had left Theo had told Sugi he wanted to marry Miss Nulani.
‘Do you think it’s wrong of me, Sugi?’ he had asked.
Sugi had been amazed. Why was Sir asking him?
‘You are a wise man, Sugi,’ Sir had said warmly. ‘So tell me,
am
I doing the right thing?’
‘It is the best thing you can do, Sir,’ Sugi had said. ‘Nothing else will do, for either of you, now. It is meant to be. You were meant to meet, your ages do not matter. At first I was worried, but now, I am certain of it.’
Sir had smiled at that, his anxieties momentarily smoothed out. And then, because he could not say all he felt, he had tried to joke.
‘I take it I have your blessing, Sugi,’ he had said.
‘A thousand blessings, Sir.’
And they had sat in this way, in the darkness, sipping their beers, wrapped lightly in all that was left unsaid. Later, Sugi again said, ‘I’ll look after her. She’ll be safe until your return.’
‘I know,’ Theo had replied, with calm certainty. ‘I know you will, Sugi, you are my friend.’ And then early the next morning he had gone.
‘Sir is different,’ Sugi told the girl, now. ‘Sir is a wonderful man. And soon,’ he said gently, smiling encouragingly at her, ‘when he returns, I hear you’ll become his wife. So be patient, have faith. It will be a blessing for you both, you’ll see.’
His words settled between them, like the flock of white birds that sat in circles on the empty beach.
While he had been talking, the girl had been drawing him. She had never drawn him before. She did not know why this was, she said. But she had drawn him now. She showed him the sketch. Then she tore it out of her notebook and gave it to him. Tomorrow, she told him, she would start a small painting. It would be of Sugi and it would be finished by the time Theo returned home. It would be her welcome-home present for him, she said, smiling at last.