standing stock-still and statue-like in the coconut grove, sari-silk clinging to her, flowers fallen from her hair. There was no escape. The land became a curtain of green water. Pawpaw leaves detached themselves, floating like large athletic spiders to the ground. The rain spared nothing. There were so many rivulets to form, so many surfaces to hammer against. Although it was still quite early, huge black clouds gave the garden an air of darkness. Even the birds, sheltering, waiting patiently, could barely be heard above the chorus of falling water. Earlier on, in the dead of night, a servant swore she had heard the devil-bird scream. It had come out of the forest because of the rain, the servant said, in the hope of escape. But escape was no longer possible.
‘Aiyo,’ wailed the servant, for she knew this was an ill omen.
‘You must leave an offering on the roadside,’ said her friend the cinnamon seller. ‘If you heard the devil-bird you must pray to God for protection.’
So the servant woman took a plantain leaf and some temple flowers. She wrapped a mound of milk rice and rambutans in it, decorated it with fried fish and coconut, and left it outside the gate. She hoped the gods would be pleased. But the gods were not listening. They were too busy with the rains.
Then just as suddenly, without warning, it stopped. The noise and the roar of the water ceased, and the early-morning traffic picked up from where it had been held up. Bicycle bells rang, the rickshaw men ran, and the crows that had been sheltering under the eaves of buildings came out again and continued their scavenging in the rubbish as though they had never left off. The ground steamed. The mud remained on the road of course, and passers-by still held up their umbrellas to catch any stray drop of wetness, but by and large the rain had stopped for the moment. It was as though someone had turned off a tap. What a different the sun made, bringing out all the everyday symphony of sounds, of callings and cawing and whistling and scrapings, and because she had slept in late after last night’s event, Alicia’s scales and arpeggios, joining in where the rain left off.
The servant, having made her offering to the gods, on this day of total eclipse, brought in the breakfast. It consisted of milk rice, coarse jaggery, seeni sambal and mangoes.
‘For the lady,’ she said, beaming at Grace.
It was meant as a pleasant surprise, but Grace, coming in just then (where had she been at this hour? wondered Myrtle), soaked to the bone and ashen-faced, did not look pleased.
‘What is this?’ she had shouted. ‘Who gave you permission to make milk rice? Who told you to make this auspicious dish? Do I pay you to make food without instruction?’
Myrtle was astonished. Her cousin seemed beside herself. She was not normally a woman to show her temper in this way. Grace did not look well. She looked on the verge of collapse.
‘Where’ve you been, darl?’ Aloysius asked, astonished. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere. You’re soaking. Here, give her a towel, will you, Myrtle? Thornton, pour your mother a drink.’
‘I have a headache,’ Grace said abruptly, seeing Myrtle staring at her. ‘I’m going to bed.’
She disappeared to her room.
‘What on earth is going on?’ asked Myrtle slyly.
Aloysius, ignoring her, walked abruptly out of the room.
‘What’s wrong with your mother?’ Myrtle asked Frieda.
But Frieda did not want to talk either.
‘I think I’m coming down with a fever,’ Frieda mumbled. And she too disappeared into her room.
Some party, no? thought Myrtle. She nodded her head from side to side, as though having a heated conversation. Jasper watched her intensely. He was on his higher perch this morning and felt much better since it had rained. The air had thinned out and it was generally much cooler. He felt his old self again. Almost. He shuffled round and round the perch.
‘Hello, bastards,’ he said, and when Myrtle ignored him he jauntily whistled a snatch of The Magic Flute, the bit he knew the best. Then he did his impersonation of the neighbour’s dog and for an encore he whistled the Schubert that Alicia always played. Then, when his saw-drill noise had finally driven her from the room, cursing, he began to repeat a new sound he was learning. Softly at first, for Jasper always perfected his repertoire softly, he practised the sound of the devil-bird. Last night he had been woken up several times. First, there had been the sounds of sirens rushing past. Then Christopher had come crashing in.
‘Good morning, men!’ Jasper had remarked, though, unusually for him, Christopher had not replied.
The rest of the family followed, making no effort at being quiet. And finally, sometime towards the early morning, he had awoken again to a long and awful scream, so long and so strangled that Jasper, lifting his head, sleepily protested.
‘Be quiet, men!’
The sound had gone on and on, not waking anyone else, but it had stayed in Jasper’s head and he remembered it now with his usual clarity.
During the shocking, hurried journey home, shocking because no one had ever seen Christopher in quite this way before, hurried because of the embarrassment, they had all been subdued.
‘It was a good party you missed,’ said Thornton tentatively, not wanting to upset Christopher any more by questioning him too closely.
What was the matter with him? he wondered uneasily. Had he been in a fight?
‘Time we left anyway,’ Aloysius said by way of comfort. He looked shocked, Thornton noticed, while Grace seemed almost too upset to speak.
‘What on earth were you doing at the demonstration?’ asked Jacob. The thought of what might have happened frightened him, making him sound furious. ‘What did you expect, you fool, if you go to dangerous places like that? I told you to keep away from the riots. I told you. You’re lucky to have got away with burnt hands!’
‘That’s enough now, Jacob,’ Grace said quietly from the back of the old Austin Morris. Her voice was that of a stranger. It was hardly audible. In the darkness her face looked deathly pale.
‘I hope Sunil will be all right,’ Alicia said anxiously, for, in spite of all her pleas, Sunil had gone back to the UEP head quarters to send a telegram.
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Grace said, ‘he’ll be fine.’
She sounded as if she was gasping for air. Thornton’s unease grew. Christopher too seemed to be struck dumb. His headlong flight to find his mother, his astonishing uncontrollable grief, was followed by silence. As soon as they got back to the house, he disappeared. No one could make any sense of what had happened, no one could work out why he had been anywhere near the riots. Unobserved by any of them, Christopher slipped away and rode his bicycle all the way back to the beach at Galle Face.
It was now almost four o’clock in the morning. The rain had perfumed the air, only the sound of the sea gnawing at the shore remained, a reminder of the storm. Far away on the horizon a streak of lilac struggled to appear against the sky. The boats were coming in with the day’s catch. On the quay, seagulls circled around the fishermen, waiting for a pause in the activities, hoping for a morsel of food. Christopher stared at the beach, miraculously ironed smooth with the morning, every blemish swept as though by an unseen hand. Grief, like nothing he had ever felt before, broke, riding roughshod over him. He was distraught.
