something about Anna.
‘I used to see her every morning in a little café where I went for breakfast.’
‘In London?’
‘No, in Venice. She was Italian. We used to glance at each other without speaking. It was bitterly cold that winter. The apartment I was renting was so cold that I would go to this little dark café for breakfast. And I would drink a grappa,’ he said smiling, remembering.
‘What happened then?’
‘One day she came in with some other people. Two women and a man. The man was clearly interested in her.’
‘So what did you do?’
Theo smiled, shaking his head. ‘Nothing. What could I do? My Italian was not very good in those days. But then she turned and waved at me. Asked me if I would like to join them. I was astonished, astonished that she should notice me.’
‘But you said you used to look at each other every morning.’
‘Yes,’ said Theo. ‘I suppose I mean I was surprised she noticed me enough to want to talk to me.’
He was silent again, thinking of the fluidity of their lives afterwards, the passion that never seemed to diminish as they travelled through Europe. Then he described the high tall house in London with the mirrors and the blousy crimson peonies she loved to buy. He spoke of the books they had both written, so different yet one feeding off the other.
‘She was very beautiful,’ he said, unaware of the change in his voice. ‘Now she was someone you should have drawn.’
Nulani was listening intensely. He became aware of her curious dark eyes fixed on him. He did not know how much she understood. What could Europe mean to her?
‘My brother Jim wants to go to Europe,’ she said at last. ‘He says, when he is in England studying it will be easy to travel.’
‘And you? What about you?’
But he knew the answer even before she told him. Who would take her? What would she make of Paris. And Venice?
‘I will go one day,’ she said as though reading his mind. ‘Maybe we will go together.’
He felt his chest tighten unaccountably, and he wondered what her father had been like. What would he have made of this beautiful daughter of his, had he lived? Nulani had told him he had been a poet. She remembered him, she told Theo, but only as a dreamer. Always making her mother angry as she, Nulani, did now. What fragile balance in their family had been upset by his death? The afternoon had moved on but the heat showed no sign of letting up. The sun had moved to another place.
‘You should go home,’ he said, suddenly anxious, not wishing to keep her out too late. ‘I’ll get Sugi to walk you home.’
But she would have none of it; standing close to him holding her paints, so close he could smell the faint perfume that was her skin, mixing with the oils.
‘Thank you,’ she said and she went, a splash of red against the sea-faded blue gate, and then through the trees, and then taking in glimpses of road and bougainvillea before she disappeared from view around the bend of the hot empty road. Taking with her all the myriad, unresolved hues of the day, shimmering into the distance.
THEO HAD NOT SEEN THE GIRL for five days. He waited, watching the geckos climbing haltingly across the lime-washed walls. He walked on the beach most evenings, much to Sugi’s alarm, ignoring the curfews, hoping she might be doing the same. He sat on the veranda smoking; he wandered into the room strewn with her paints. The smell of turpentine and oil remained as strong as ever. It was the way of smells, he knew. It had been this way when Anna had died. All the smells of beeswax and red peonies, of lavender-washed cotton and typewriter ribbon had gathered together, bringing her back to him in small concentrated fragments. So he knew about smells, the way they tumbled into the air, falling softly again, here and there, like confetti without the bride. The sunlight seemed suddenly to have lost its brilliance. His old anger returned. He had thought he was over it, but bitterness attacked him in waves. Ugliness remembered. Sugi watched him surreptitiously, serving his meals, bringing a tray of morning tea, cooking a redfish curry in the way he liked it. The fans had stopped working again and the lights often failed at night. Sugi watched him in the light of the coconut-oil lamps. There did not seem to be much evidence of Sir working. Across the garden Theo felt the silence stretch into eternity. The leaves on the pawpaw tree looked large and malevolent.
‘Sir,’ said Sugi finally, ‘Sir, why are you not writing?’
Beyond the light from the veranda the undergrowth rustled vaguely. Two mosquito coils burned into insubstantial columns. A black-spotted moth circled the lamps, mesmerised. Sugi looked at Theo. This is a fine state of affairs, he thought. It was as well he was here.
‘Maybe there is trouble at her house, no?’ he ventured tentatively. ‘Shall I go and find out?’
‘No,’ said Theo quickly.
Such an intrusion was unbearable and he could not allow it. Sugi fell silent again. Maybe he should talk about something else instead. Sir was a grown man after all. He had lived all over the world. Given the things he had been through, his innocence was surprising.
‘There is a shortage of food in the market this week,’ Sugi said. ‘I don’t know why. I could only get river cress, a coconut and a bunch of shrivelled radishes.’
It was true. The rice was appalling too, and there were no fresh vegetables to be had.
‘Of all the places on this island,’ he continued, complaining loudly, hoping to distract Theo, ‘this should be the place for fresh fish. But the day’s catch had vanished by the time I got into the town. There’s been some kind of trouble further along the coast; maybe that’s got something to do with it. Someone told me the army drove their jeeps on to the sands, chasing a group of men. And then they shot them. They were all young, Sir. Nobody knows what they had done.’
He spread his hands helplessly in front of him.
‘The army left the bodies on the beach, and the local people cleared up the mess. There is always someone prepared to clean up after them. Either a Buddhist or a Christian. They will always find someone to do the dirty work.’
Theo shifted uneasily in his chair. Sugi’s anxiety was different from his.
On the fifth evening of Nulani’s absence, in spite of Sugi’s entreaties, Theo decided to walk along the beach again.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘nothing can happen to me. It’s not people like me that interest them. I’m too well known. I’m safe.’
And he went out. A full moon spilled a continuous stream of silver on to the water. An express train hooted its way along the coast, rushing towards Colombo. But there was no sign of the girl on the empty beach. What is the matter with me, he thought, exasperated. Am I going mad? She’s probably busy, helping her mother, sewing, being seventeen. And she never said when she would be back, he reasoned silently. He was puzzled by this disturbance to his equilibrium. Time was passing, in a few months it would be winter in England. His agent would not wait for ever.
