do so, but the savoury smells drifting out into the garden were tantalising.
‘I’m starving!’ Esther said flatly, and she sneaked off, leaving Janake and Alice on the verandah.
‘Where’s she going?’ frowned Janake. ‘She can’t eat yet.’
‘She’s gone to steal some rice to make chewing gum with,’ Alice told him.
‘What?’ Janake laughed. ‘She’s off her head!’
Alice said nothing and Janake looked at her sharply. He was four years older than her and had known her all her life. Yesterday when he had returned from Peradeniya his mother had told him about Sita. His mother had also told him that Alice was probably going to England because of what had happened. Janake had been shocked.
‘But, Amma, Alice loves it here,’ he had cried. ‘And it would break Mr Fonseka’s heart if she went.’
Janake had been present on the first day Alice had been shown the sea as a tiny baby. He had been with her when she took her first faltering footsteps across the sands. It had been Janake who had held her hand, watched over by an anxious Bee. As she grew, it was always Janake who played with her whenever she visited her grandparents. A few weeks ago he had gone with Bee to buy a bicycle for her. The idea of Alice going to England, of her never being here, was incomprehensible to him. He glanced at her. His mother had told him not to mention the subject to Alice in case she didn’t know, so he couldn’t question her. Alice was staring straight ahead with an unusually serious look on her face. Janake scuffed the ground with his feet and then he picked up a stick and began whittling it.
‘Esther’s a fool,’ he said angrily. He felt both helpless and full of an unaccountable rage.
Esther returned with a handful of hot rice. She squeezed it into two balls, offering one to Janake.
‘Here, have some home-made chewing gum,’ she grinned.
‘No thank you,’ Janake said, scowling. ‘That isn’t real chewing gum,’ he scoffed.
‘Fine!’ Esther cried, tossing her ponytail and offering it to Alice instead.
Alice became aware of a certain shift in the order of things between the three of them.
‘You’re supposed to keep moving it in your mouth like gum,’ Esther laughed, not unkindly. And don’t swallow it!’
‘But it isn’t real gum, and I’m hungry.’
‘Why do you want to be so American?’ Janake asked curiously.
He was watching them with narrowed eyes and Alice had the distinct feeling he wanted to pick a fight with Esther.
‘You should stop trying to be like other people and just be Ceylonese. We are a great country!’
‘This is a boring place,’ Esther said shortly. ‘And in any case, I’m not one of you Singhalese types, men. I’m a Burgher, remember. See?’
She held out her arm, which was several shades lighter than Janake’s.
‘Huh!’ Janake snorted. Alice is fairer than you. Put your arm out, Alice.’
‘That’s because she’s half-caste, idiot. Her father is a Tamil.’
‘So? So are you! Idiot yourself.’
Esther shrugged, losing interest. She stared out to sea. Later on, when she got home Anton, the boy from the fair, was coming to call.
She chewed her mouthful of rice more slowly. Anton had a distant Tamil relative and this made Dias nervous.
‘Just look what happened to Sita,’ Dias had warned. ‘I don’t want that to be your fate. We’re Burghers. Who knows when it will be our turn to be kicked? We should be careful.’
But Esther didn’t care. She would be fifteen soon. She hated this country. She hated the way things were changing, and she did not want to study in Singhalese.
‘But soft, a light shines from the east,’ she murmured.
‘What?’ asked Alice.
Janake began to laugh. Esther was silent. She was thinking of Anton, wishing he had kissed her at the fair. In reality he had grinned and offered her some real American gum. America, that was where Esther wanted to go. Not England.
‘“Gallop apace, you fiery horses,’“ she said loudly, forgetting where she was.
Until the new law had stopped them learning in English, they had been studying Romeo and Juliet in school. No one would ever translate it into Singhalese.
‘What are you saying?’ Janake asked.
‘Nothing you’d understand.’
And she turned to Alice instead, for Janake was annoying her.
‘I was just thinking, you know, men, your sister will have been buried by now.’
Alice too was thinking. She wanted to write a letter to Jennifer. My dear Jennifer, she wanted to say. My sister died yesterday. I will be coming back to school soon. Calling the baby ‘sister’ made a difference to how she felt about it. How odd it all was. A mottled brown, dusty rattlesnake writhed in the dust. Alice imagined her mother in her hospital bed, writhing as if she too was shedding a skin. It occurred to her that, had her sister lived, there might have come a time when the two of them would have sat on the verandah just as she was doing with Esther. Alice would have been the eldest. It was the hottest moment of the day. Her grandfather had still not returned from the funeral. How long did it take to bury someone? Inside the house, the sounds of pirith had stopped and the food was being brought in. Esther moved restlessly.
‘Dust to dust,’ she intoned. ‘But life must go on, and I’m ravenous!’
‘Alice,’ someone called.
‘They want to tie the thread on you. Go, quickly,’ Janake said. ‘Go, Alice. Tomorrow you can show me how you can ride your bicycle on the beach.’
Esther gave her a small shove.
‘The sooner that’s done, the sooner we can eat, child!’
The monks were having their food at last. Strangely, now that they had stopped chanting, Alice could hear the melodious echoes everywhere. She could hear it within the hum of the cicadas, rising and falling, and the imperceptible rustle of the leaves on the murunga tree, and in the waves that spread like ice cream on the beach. She wondered what her school friend was doing now. My dear Jennifer, my sister was buried today and now I’m going to have the pirith string tied around my wrist to help her into the next life. The leaves on the mango tree were covered in fine sea dust. A thin black cat limped in from next door’s garden; she stretched out on the parched flowerbed and licked her wounds. Two thoughts like brightly coloured rubber balls juggled in Alice’s head. One concerned her mother and the other her sister. There wasn’t a single cloud floating in the sky. Eternity was up there, but she was starving. She went hurriedly in to have the thread tied to her wrist.
After they had finished eating, the monks washed their
