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 all around the seagulls’ cries made invisible circles in the air. It was almost four o’clock. Nine years had scuttled away like a crab.
‘I wish today would slow down,’ she said, as the car clutched the hairpin bend, turning higher and higher until suddenly, sprawling in front of them and with no warning, the Sea House appeared.
The light had changed the colour of the house. Everything was clearer and more beautiful than Alice remembered. Someone had sharpened the picture of it, making the verandah and the old planter’s chairs and the garden appear brighter too. In a moment Kamala appeared and Alice was enveloped in a juggery-scented hug. On the table was a selection of rasa kavili, Singhalese sweetmeats. She did a quick count in her head. Alu-Eluvang and hakura appa, juggery, hoppers and jelly. No, nothing had been forgotten. All her favourites were there: the boroa, the small delicious Portuguese biscuits she loved, and the jug of freshly squeezed lime juice. In the middle, in pride of place, was a magnificent love cake with nine candles waiting to be lit. Her grandmother had not stopped smiling. Beside her, tied with a pink ribbon, was a lime-green bicycle.
‘Well,’ Bee asked, ‘so, what d’you think about the colour?’
A bicycle!’ Alice said, astonished further by this day of surprises.
And she rushed full tilt towards it.
Then she stopped.
‘But I can’t ride,’ she wailed.
Ah! Yes, that’s a problem,’ agreed Bee seriously. ‘Well, someone’s got to teach you then. Now, I wonder who that might be!’
‘I’m not hungry, Amma,’ Sita was saying even before she sunk awkwardly down on one of the old planter’s chairs. ‘All I want is a cup of tea.’
Alice scowled. Why was her mother spoiling everything? Or rather, she corrected herself, why was the baby spoiling her birthday?
‘Sita,’ Kamala said, ‘you look exhausted. How can you go on like this? Think of the baby. Why didn’t you let your father collect Alice? And why don’t you stay the night now you’re here? Stanley can manage for a night, can’t he?’
But Sita was shaking
