Adam's Peak. Heather Burt

      The whole family, it seems, is out of sorts. Mum now cries at the slightest thing—the mention of a holiday for which she’ll be absent, the sight of tea pluckers in the hills—or sometimes for no reason at all. Aunty Mary follows Mum’s cues, bursting out in supportive tears promptly and heartily. Susie creeps about, staying out of everyone’s way, doing as she’s told. Even Grandpa, proud host of the tea plantation, seems small and uncertain. Dad is behaving strangest of all—one minute playful and boisterous, rounding up the troops for a game of cricket; the next, wandering silently into the hills, not answering when Mum calls. At the moment, he and all the other grown-ups are out on the lawn, gloomily drinking their afternoon tea. From the cool shelter of Grandpa’s verandah, Rudy watches them.

      It’s the usual group sitting around the low cane table, and yet nothing at all seems usual. Over the course of the weekend, the once ordinary events of a visit to Grandpa’s tea plantation have been given special titles, each of them beginning with “The Last”: The Last Tour of the Factory, The Last Milk Rice Breakfast, The Last Trip to the Nuwara Eliya Market. And now, a cloud of stifling sadness hangs over The Last Afternoon Tea on the Lawn. Next week, there will be a last Christmas at Aunty Mary and Uncle Eugene’s house, and by New Year’s Day the Van Twest family will be carving a new life from the ice and snow of Canada (though Dad will be taking his tea expertise to an important job with the Red Rose Company). For a long time it seemed to Rudy that this new life was all anyone could talk about. But in these final days, the bubbling anticipation has gone flat and the word Canada has taken on a new, taboo meaning, like Uncle Eugene’s illness. Something that shouldn’t be talked about.

      In contrast to the gloomy gathering on the lawn, the day is bright and airy, a welcome change from Colombo’s heat. Mum is wearing her fancy turquoise sari, one last time, its gold embroidery gleaming in the afternoon sun. When she came outside for afternoon tea, Dad said she looked like she was off to a bloody Kandyan wedding, but Rudy noticed that he smiled proudly when he said it.

      Scratching a new mosquito bite, Rudy turns his attention to an army of small red ants transporting the corpse of a cockroach across the polished cement floor. For a time, the collective strength and cooperation of the insects fascinates him, but as they disappear into a crevice, he heaves a sigh of boredom and squints out at his cousins, all older and all girls, talking endlessly in a far corner of the lawn. For the first time ever, he finds himself wishing for a brother his own age to play with, or even a younger one he could boss around. His mother has told him there’ll be plenty of children on their street in Montreal, which makes him wish he were there already.

      For a change of scenery, he goes into the bungalow. It’s quiet and dark inside, and it takes a while for his eyes to adjust. Dragging his fingers along the wall, he goes to the sitting room in search of Susie, last seen giving the elephant figurines a ride on the turntable of the old gramophone. He’s disappointed not to find her, as he hoped she would take him to look at the crocodile lamp in Grandpa’s study. But on further consideration, he decides that a six-year-old who’ll soon be going to school in Canada shouldn’t need his sister’s protection to look at a dead crocodile. He continues down the hallway, his bare feet making sticking sounds on the wooden floor, and pushes the study door open. The room is dusty and old-fashioned, but bright, its white walls ribbed with slats of sunlight from the louvred shutters. As his eyes readjust, Rudy scans his grandfather’s things—the tall shelves crammed with leather-bound books, the framed certificates and photographs, the brass ashtray stand, and the mounds of documents on the massive desk. Finally, he zeroes in on the lamp.

      The crocodile lamp is Grandpa’s prize possession. It stands next to the fireplace, seemingly balanced on the curve of its tail, though a pair of metal supports drilled into the hind legs provides the real stability. When the lamp is on, the animal’s ivory belly reflects the soft glow of the electric light bulb that has somehow been rigged to its head under a small khaki shade. Stunted forearms and chipped claws are frozen in a perpetual snatch, while the mouth is fixed in a toothy grimace. The eyes are glass and disappointingly artificial; still, the overall impression is one of terrific fierceness.

      Facing the creature now, though, Rudy

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