disgustedly from his horse. ‘That was why the shark bit. He says he will prove he is stronger than she is by issuing an even greater charm to bind the sharks for the rest of the season. I suppose I shall have to pay him double.’
‘Do you see?’ whispered Papa. ‘He can’t lose, that conjuror. He’s got it covered either way.’
The conjuror began with further charms, more exaggerated and bizarre contortions, ululations, screechings and mumblings. Finally, his adherents appeared to be satisfied. Only then did the owners begin to unload the oysters. They lay in heaps to be sold in lots, unopened. When the auction began the bids were fast; each lot went to the highest bidder who then came and hauled away the bags.
It was on that day, in Ceylon, that James saw one more extraordinary sight. A small girl about his age. Proper, dressed for a garden party in flounces of white all dotted with yellow. Sashed and bonneted like Little Miss Muffet on her tuffet, in all that sand and wind she held, over her small self, casting a useless pale shadow in which she was careful to stay, a red, ruffled umbrella.
His eye was drawn to the red umbrella. Red spot in the centre, making the whole scene revolve around it. She was the eye of the storm, that’s what she was. She was the heart of the matter.
‘Who is that?’ he asked his Papa.
‘That?’ his father replied, following his finger. ‘Don’t point!’
There were thousands of people on the beach. He had to point. ‘The girl with the umbrella,’ he said.
‘That,’ he said. ‘You mean she. She is the daughter of a man from the garrison. I believe he is called Mr Avery McBean.’
They were getting closer. She was plump and she pouted. She had a magisterial air about her. He knew as soon as he saw this child that she would make planets revolve around her.
‘Do you know her Papa?’ he asked.
‘I cannot say that I know her,’ said his father, ‘but I have been introduced. And so shall you be.’
And they set out across what seemed like the Sahara, this mile-wide expanse of dry sand. It grew softer underfoot the farther they went from the ocean’s edge. James’s feet sank into it, making each step a little harder than the previous had been, giving him the sense that even as he approached Miss McBean so also did he retreat from her, the sole of one foot moving backwards in the shifting sand and digging itself a little hole as he stepped out on the other. Slowly, ever so slowly, face into the wind and clinging to his hat, he made progress toward her.
Thus men approach their fate.
It was not quick enough. As mentioned, there were, in that area of Ceylon at that time, in the untrimmed jungles that lay behind that godforsaken beach, all manner of wild beasts. Elephants that came steaming out at road crossings, tigers whose golden eyes could be seen in the dark, and buffalos. The buffalos did not like red.
Just then one of these bad-tempered buffalos appeared out of nowhere. He caught a glimpse of the plump, pouting Miss McBean, and took exception to her red umbrella. He put his head down. A charging buffalo is not amusing. It was wide of shoulder with a bony ridge down its back and a tail with a point on it like the devil. Its hoary head was low with shiny black horns at the ready.
‘Papa!’ James cried. His heart began to pound. Had no one told Miss McBean about the colour red? Probably she would have paid no attention if they had. Or did she wear it as the soldiers did, with a fated desire to draw attention to herself?
The buffalo did not stop to think. He headed for her with murder in his eyes.
Dawdling and oblivious, she swung her umbrella over her head, then lowered it to waist level and then, holding it in front of her body as if she were a vaudeville dancer, twirled it. The animal bellowed straight at her.
James did not recall his Papa answering. But in a minute they were running in dry sand. The more they hurried, the deeper they sank. Papa held on to James with one hand and waved his hat with the other, hallooing like mad, though his words were lost in the wind. The buffalo ploughed on. A few men in the crowd shouted warnings. A soldier on horseback wheeled around and cantered toward the rolling red frills. A man who must have been the girl’s father appeared out of a tent and they suddenly were all, all–buffalo, horse and soldier, Papa and James, her doting dad–racing against sand and time toward the girl while she–surprised, but unflinching–got a whiff of danger, and lowered her lovely toy to the sand. She found herself staring down the nose of a charging buffalo.
And what did she do? She put one little fist on her hip and made as if to stamp a foot in a wee Scottish tantrum. But just as she lifted it off the sand, a long arm that might have belonged to a polo player grabbed her around the waist and scooped her up to hold her against a solid military thigh where she remained unbending and in full possession of her umbrella. The buffalo charged into empty space, looking foolish and disappointed.
Later that trip he must have met her. He must have heard her piercing little voice and seen her dimples and righteous blue eyes and pale protected skin. But the voice and the eyes desert him; he has no memory of them. He only remembers the untouched froth of her, the childish form of her, there on that mystic and desolate beach. He remembers her innocent and altogether misplaced lack of fear.
That was the charm. It was not the one his father meant to put on him, a bondage to the business of pearls. To pearls James became an ambivalent servant. To Miss McBean he became a slave, and remained so for many years to come.
The coffee was drained from their cups.
‘It’s all in the past,’ said James Lowinger. ‘You mustn’t be so interested,’ he chided, gently. ‘And not you, Vera, for certain. And a good thing it is that there are no pearls left in the oceans and rivers of the world, my darling,’ he said then with an irresistible and roguish look of tenderness. ‘You can be the first of our family to be free of it.’
Roberta fussed getting James Lowinger’s coat. He shambled to the door, this big man, and pulled his umbrella from the corner where he’d propped it, and paused on the step to open it skyward and herded Vera under it on to the street. She walked him carefully back to the warehouse. Fifteen minutes later, Vera stood waiting for the streetcar in the rain. The first in the family to be free of it. That meant the others were not free. Her grandfather was a captive, she saw that. His father too, from the sound of it: pearls were his religion. Her father must be a captive as well. It must be that which kept him in the Far East and away from her all her life so far. Even her mother, dead now, must have been a slave. The Lowingers were all that way, set apart. And so would she be. Vera Lowinger Drew: the last of a line of men and women whose lives were governed by the pearl. It was sad but glorious. She got off the streetcar and began to walk home. And now the pearls were gone, as the family was almost gone; it had come down to the two of them.
Or three.
She entered the house by the front door, throwing it behind her so that it slammed. Keiko emerged from the kitchen, smiling.
‘Vera.’ Probably she practised the name half the day. Vera was filled with scorn. She let Keiko take her bag. She could see behind her in the kitchen the shells and bowls of water that betrayed the various weeds and molluscs that would be her dinner.
‘Can’t we have meatloaf like everyone else?’
Keiko set the book bag on the side table. In her halting English she offered to learn how to make it, if Vera would teach her. Vera said
