But then he went to get the girl, for the lunch was ready, and he saw the light flickering against the walls of the room where she worked. Her small face was smudged with paint, and it struck him forcefully that no, his book was not doomed at all. For the early-afternoon sun seemed to turn and pivot on a new axis of optimism. Sugi too seemed to have excelled himself with the lunch. All he said was that the market had been good as he set the jug of lime juice down and brought in the curries;
murunga
, bitter-gourd,
brinjal
, fish and boiled rice. He was smiling broadly and his previous disapproval of the girl seemed to have evaporated. Nulani, unaware of any difference, chattered happily with him as he brought in the food. But he would
not stay while they ate, shyly asking instead if he might take a look at the painting of Sir.
‘Yes, yes,’ the girl said delighted. ‘But Mr Samarajeeva must not see it yet.’
‘Will you stop calling me that!’ Theo laughed. ‘Come back and tell me what you think.’
But Sugi could not be persuaded. He had work to do, he said. He was going to put barbed wire over the back-garden wall, whether Sir liked it or not.
So that it wasn’t until much later, when they were alone and he smoked his cigarette on the veranda with Theo, that he said, ‘She is very talented, Sir.’
They sat for a moment in companiable silence.
‘And she has become too attached to you,’ Sugi said.
All afternoon he had been working on the garden. The heat had eased off slightly, and then the girl, having cleared up her paints, had gone home. Huge tropical stars appeared between the leaves of the plantain trees. The garden was as secure as it was possible to make it, he told Theo. It had not been easy to get barbed wire; in the end, hoping no one had seen him, Sugi had picked up what had been lying around the beach. He was still worried about the boy from the night before, he told Theo.
‘You worry too much,’ said Theo, smiling at him. His affection felt clumsy. Again he recognised his own inability to speak of the growing bond between them.
He is like a brother to me, he thought with amazement. If I believed in it, I would say we had known one another in a previous life. It occurred to him that he would like to give Sugi something to mark his feelings, some tangible thing, a talisman for the future that was nothing to do with payments or employment. But he did not know how, or even what. And then, once more, he found himself thinking of the girl and her extraordinary quiet ability
to make sense of all she saw, with delicate pencil lines overlaying more lines. The evening, and the night ahead, seemed suddenly interminably long until the morning. He hoped she had reached her home safely. He worried that she let neither Sugi nor him walk her back. He worried that her uncle was waiting for her. What on earth is
wrong
with me, he muttered, half exasperated, half amused at himself. I’m acting like her mother. And then he thought, Am I simply being sentimental? Perhaps this is what middle age is about. As he lit the mosquito coil, before he got under the net, he remembered again that he had forgotten to ask Sugi who had delivered Nulani’s drawing the night before.
One morning, some weeks later, Theo decided to visit the temple on the hill. The girl had told him it was very beautiful.
‘You should go,’ she had said. ‘We held my father’s funeral there.’
He had sensed she wanted him to go for this reason and he thought of the irony of it. Burning the man who had already been burned. Mrs Mendis was leaving the temple as he entered. He heard her calling him and looked around for an escape but there was none.
‘I have brought an offering for my son,’ she said. ‘He sits his scholarship exam this morning. I think his karma is good but I want to be sure he passes. I don’t want him to join the army. I don’t want him to die like my husband,’ she said, talking too loudly.
Theo looked at the woman with dislike. She had not mentioned her daughter once. Inside the temple it was cool and dark, and further back, out of sight, the monks sat in rows, their chants rising and falling in slow, low folds. The air was crowded with sounds, like the hum of hundreds of invisible birds. It reminded him of his childhood, of his mother. He had
not been in a temple for many years. He stood in the coolness, thinking of Mr Mendis, wondering what he might have been like. And then he thought of the girl, wishing he had known her as a small child. Thinking how fleeting glimpses of that lost time often emerged in her mischievous laugh. Certain, too, that her father would always remain within her, however long she lived.
That afternoon, Nulani talked about her brother’s probable departure.
‘I think he will be happier in England,’ she told Theo. ‘And maybe he will come back to see us when the trouble is over.’
By now she was working on the larger portrait. She wanted it to be a surprise, she said. But she was less happy, he saw. Something was ebbing out of her, some vitality moved away leaving her drawn and hurt. Watching this, Theo felt unaccountably depressed.
‘That boy will never come back,’ Sugi said quietly, when he heard. ‘He only thinks about himself. Once he leaves he will forget about them.’
Sugi watched Theo. Although he said very little he knew all the signs were there. If he is not careful, he worried, Sir will get hurt. Why doesn’t he see this? Why, after all he has been through, is he not more careful? He’s a clever man, but…And Sugi shook his head.
‘Maybe,’ Theo said, ‘things will be easier for her when Jim goes. Maybe the mother will care more.’
‘The Mendis woman has only ever cared about the son, I tell you, Sir,’ Sugi said. ‘I know all about her. After the father was murdered, she used to talk to my friend who works in Sumaner House. And it was always the boy she worried about. Lucky Jim! That’s her name for him. She hardly notices her daughter.’
They were sitting on the veranda once again. It was late and the heat had finally moved a little distance away. Most nights now Theo listened to the menace of the garden, the rustlings and unknown creepings that scratched against the trees. He was hardly aware of doing so, but since the intruder, both he and Sugi were watchful.
‘And her father?’ he asked. ‘What was he like?’
‘People used to watch them,’ Sugi remembered. ‘Mr Mendis used to walk with his daughter every evening, up and down the beach. They used to say you could set your clocks watching those two. They always walked at five o’clock, every day, except when the monsoons came. He used to hold her hand. She was devoted to him.’ Sugi’s eyes moved restlessly across the garden. ‘It must have been terrible for her after he died. She must have felt so alone.’
They were both silent. Then Sugi went off for his nightly surveillance of the perimeter walls and gate, testing his barbed wire, wandering silently through the undergrowth. When he was satisfied that everything was in order, he came back and accepted a beer.
‘She needs to go from this place,’ he continued. ‘There is nothing here for her. Her uncle is a very unpleasant man. And, Sir, I know I’ve said it before, but you should be careful with this family. The girl is good but you are a stranger to these parts. Please don’t forget this.’
The night, once again, was quiet. There were no sounds of gunshots or sirens. Nor were there street lights here, for it was too far away from the other houses. The scent of blossom drifted in waves towards them. Occasionally the plaintive, lonely hoot of a train could be heard in the distance, but that was all.
‘You can’t change anything,’ said Sugi. He sounded sad. ‘You are right, things will take longer than we expect. Life is just a
continuous cycle. Eventually, of course, at the right time there will be change. But however hard we try to alter things ourselves, what must be will be. Who knows how long it will take, Sir. Sri Lanka is an ancient island. It cannot be hurried.’
Theo watched the headlights of a car disappeared from view. The yellow beam stretched through the trees, bending with the road, piercing the darkness, searching the night. Then it was gone. It occurred to him there had been no car along that particular stretch of road for weeks.
Someone had thrown a plucked chicken over the wall into the garden. They had tossed it over, cleverly missing the barbed wire. It was trussed; legs together, smeared with yellowish powder, a thin red thread wound tightly round its neck. Even though death had come swiftly, leaving traces of blood, staring at it Theo imagined the frenzy of anger that had brought it to this state. A whole pageant of slaughter lay here, he thought, in this one small carcass. Mesmerised, he gazed at a half-remembered history, of sacrifice both ancient and bloodied. The turmeric had given the chicken’s skin the appearance of a threadbare carpet. He touched the bird with his foot; it was so long since he had seen something like this he had almost forgotten what it was meant for. And as he stood gazing at it, he remembered, in a rush of forgotten irritation, the reasons he had never made this country his home. Impatiently, for the waste of energy angered him, he kicked the chicken across the garden, and in doing so crossed a hidden boundary. For in that moment, it seemed to the horrified Sugi looking on, he did what no man should ever do: he tampered with those laws that could not be argued with.
‘Don’t touch it, Sir, for God’s sake,’ implored Sugi, but he was too late. The deed was done.
‘Don’t touch it, Sir, please. I will see to it. Someone is trying to put a curse on this place.’
Theo grinned. He has been away too long, thought Sugi, distressed. He questioned, instead of accepting. Twenty-odd years living away had made Theo forget. He was trying to single-handedly alter the inner structure of life. And seeing this, Sugi was frightened. His fear clung to the barbed wire that was pressed against the garden wall. Fear had been stalking Sugi daily for years.
‘This town is not as it used to be,’ he said. ‘We used to know everyone who lived here. We knew their fathers and their grandfathers too. We knew all the relatives, Sir. Many people have moved into this area, thinking it is safer here. But the trouble is, this has made it
less
safe. There are thugs in the pay of the authority, and there are thugs working for those who would like to be rid of the authority. Singhalese, Tamils, what does it matter who they are, everyone spies on everyone else.’ A nation’s hatred has split open, he said, like two halves of a coconut. ‘People are angry, Sir. They can barely hide it.’
Theo was silenced. Other people’s jealousies spilled out around him, dismembered bodies, here and there they scattered randomly, saffron yellow and cochineal. He could say nothing in the face of Sugi’s certainty. He did not want to hurt his feelings. Only the girl, arriving soon afterwards, expressed contempt. The dead chicken did not bother her, she said; she had seen so many before. Her father, she told Theo, had laughed at such nonsense. Her father had been full of peace, she told him. He did not believe violence answered anything, and so Nulani Mendis believed this too. She drank the lime juice Sugi had made for her and it was she who tried to reassure him. She was wearing her faded green skirt wrapped even more tightly around her slender waist and her skin
appeared flawless through the thin cotton blouse. Sunlight fell in straight sheets behind her, darkening her hair, shadowing her face, making it difficult to read her expression. For a moment she seemed no longer a child. Had she changed since yesterday? puzzled Theo.
When she finished working on her painting she discarded her overall. There were still some slivers of paint in her fingernails. Today they were of a different colour. However hard she scrubbed her hands there was still some paint left, thought Theo amused. The day righted itself. The soft smell of colour still clung to her and seemed to Theo sweeter than all the scent of the frangipani blossoms. The picture was nearly finished, she told him, and she wanted to do another one. She needed one more sketch of him. Would Theo be able to sit still, please? He hid his amusement, noticing she had become a little bossy. Her notebook of drawings had grown and she wanted to use them in one more painting. She wanted to paint Theo in his dining room with its foxed mirrors, its beautiful water glasses, its jugs. She wanted to paint him surrounded by mirror-reflected light. Light that moved, she said. This was what interested her, not the trussed chicken. And no, she did not want him to sneak a look at the portrait, she added, laughing at him.
‘You can see it soon,’ she promised, as though
he
was the child. ‘When it’s finished.’
For now, she told Theo, he could look at her sketchbook instead. Once again she gave him the fragmented stories she had collected. And again they fell from the pages in a jumble of images.
‘Look,’ she said laughing, ‘my uncle!’
She stood too close, confusing him, making him want to touch her hair. Their conversations were a running stitch across her notebook, holding together all that he could not say.
‘There’s no one at home,’ she volunteered. ‘Jim has gone to Colombo with his teacher and Amma is visiting a friend. So I’m all on my own.’
She did not say it, but it was clear she was free to do what she pleased. How can I encourage her to defy her mother in this way? wondered Theo.
‘Jim has to get all the documents he needs to leave.’ Her brother’s departure was never far from her thoughts.
‘Doesn’t he want to wait?’ asked Theo. ‘Doesn’t he want to be sure he has passed the exam first?’
But, Nulani told him, Jim was certain. His teacher too believed he would pass the examination and be awarded the British Council scholarship. Such certainty, thought Theo, raising an eyebrow. He said nothing, watching as the thought of Jim’s certain departure darted and fluttered across her face.
‘He wants to leave Sri Lanka by October,’ Nulani said. She dared not think what that would mean for her.
For the moment, though, with the absence of her family, something, some unspecified tension seemed to ease up. She would stay late and the mornings were fresh and unhampered by the heat. The days stretched deliciously before them, slipping into an invisible rhythm of its own. By now Theo had become used to her presence, and he worked steadily on his manuscript, distracted only occasionally. Perhaps, he thought, Anna had been right. She had always insisted they needed a child to give purpose to their lives. A child was an anchor. It brought with it the kind of love that settles one, she used to say. When she had died Theo had remembered this, thinking, too, how useless a child would have been when all he wanted had been her. Now he wondered if Anna, wise, lovely Anna, had been right after all.