LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘But come back before she changes too much,’ he added brusquely, ‘give her an education and then come home.’

      And he went outside, as though the matter was settled, to mix some colours for a new print he was making, calling to Alice to come and help him.

      Soon after that Sita and Alice went back to Colombo to prepare for Stanley’s departure. Back to the rickshaw-clogged streets lined with ramshackle buildings. A new harsh mood was in the air. As if a whole secret way of life had died while they had been away and the city was now preoccupied with different things. Sita walked slowly. She was still bleeding internally. At the crowded outpatients she queued with other mothers, nursing their babies. The air was filled with a tinnitus of flies as she sat, one more saried woman in a colourful line of reds and yellows against a lime-green wall. Smallpox inoculation had come to Ceylon for the first time. All around them infants screamed. Sita watched dully. She could not understand how a broken heart could still palpitate with such pain. Alice sat quietly beside her, swinging her legs. After her injection they were going to see Jennifer’s mother and the new baby. Then tomorrow she would go back to school. The thought of facing her class teacher Mrs Perris made her nervous. Before she had left, her grandmother had told her again not to worry about telling her friends that the baby had died.

      ‘Many people lose babies in this country,’ Kamala had said consolingly. ‘You mustn’t worry.’

      ‘Why should she worry what people think?’ Bee had demanded, overhearing the conversation. ‘Alice has better things to think about. She understands these things happen, don’t you, Putha?’

      Alice had nodded and then begun to giggle because her grandfather was tucking in a small parcel at the foot of her bed.

      ‘What is it? Can I see?’ she said, struggling to get it.

      It was a book she had been wanting. Another Enid Blyton.

      Waiting in the clinic, watching the other children being given their vaccinations, Alice half closed her eyes, thinking of the Sea House. Her mother stared ahead not speaking. When it was her turn, the nurse told her she was having a tetanus injection as well.

      ‘Put your arm out,’ the nurse said. ‘You mustn’t forget to collect your smallpox certificate,’ she reminded Sita. ‘You won’t be allowed into England without it.’

      Sita nodded.

      ‘You are a lucky girl, going there!’ the nurse continued, smiling encouragingly.

      ‘I don’t want to go,’ Alice told her.

      She spoke softly and the nurse didn’t seem to hear. The needle branded a small circle of pinpricks on her arm. Alice clenched her fist, saying nothing.

      ‘There might be a small reaction,’ the nurse told her mother, after which they went out into the burning sun. Suddenly Alice didn’t want to go to Jennifer’s house or see Jennifer’s mother or the baby boy she had just had. The sun boiling down on her hatless head made her feel sick.

      ‘Why do we have to go now?’ she whined.

      ‘They’re expecting us,’ Sita said shortly. ‘It will be rude if we don’t go.’

      She was carrying a parcel of some of the exquisite dresses made for her own baby.

      Jennifer lived in Colombo 7, where the gardens were lush and green and freshly watered. They took the bus, leaving the broken beauty and the chaos of the city. Even the bus appeared subtly different to Alice; emptier, cleaner. Not many people had reason to go to Colombo 7.

      ‘Look, all the signs have changed,’ Alice told her mother in English.

      ‘That happened weeks ago,’ her mother said.

      Sita clutched her parcel close to her chest. Alice swallowed. She didn’t want her mother to give away the baby dress, but she could see from the expression on Sita’s face it would do no good to bring the subject up. In the last few days, her mother had stopped her terrible crying and Alice was afraid if she mentioned their baby it would all start again.

      ‘My arm hurts,’ she said instead, hoping to give her mother something else to think about.

      Sita ignored her.

      ‘Don’t scratch it,’ was all she said.

      At Ratnapura Road they got off. The streets had widened out and were tree lined and shady. Jennifer’s house was in a cul-de-sac. A manservant opened the gate. Orange blossom and shoe-flowers cascaded over the wall. A water sprinkler was watering the grass and underneath the murunga tree stood a large shiny pram. Some dogs tied up and out of sight began to bark hysterically. Instantly they heard the alarming high-pitched cry of the baby. Sita pulled Alice along sharply, nodding at the servant woman who led them into a large cool room with tiled floors and air conditioning. Things happened in quick and disjointed fashion after that. Jennifer arrived and hugged Alice but couldn’t stop staring at Sita. Alice watched her mother try to give Jennifer’s mother the present, but because she was holding her baby Sita had to put the parcel on the table. Sita looked small and a little frail. It made Alice suddenly very angry. The baby cry was like a siren, urgent and impossible to ignore. Jennifer’s mother laughed delightedly and began to feed him.

      ‘Take Alice to play,’ she told her daughter.

      ‘Is it true, you are going to England?’ Jennifer asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the grown-ups.

      There was a Russian doll on the window ledge. Alice picked it up and began to take it apart, each doll getting smaller and smaller until the last one was so minute that she fumbled and dropped it.

      ‘Leave it,’ Jennifer said sharply. ‘Don’t break my things. When are you going to the UK?’

      ‘In a few months’ time. My dada is going to send for us.’

      The baby’s thin cry went on and on in Alice’s head.

      ‘Does it cry all the time?’

      ‘Quite a lot,’ Jennifer said importantly. ‘Baby boys are like that, you know.’

      She hesitated.

      ‘Yours was a girl, wasn’t it?’ she asked.

      Alice looked at her. She had never noticed how very black Jennifer was. Her lips were so large that their pink insides showed even when she wasn’t smiling. She looks very Singhalese, thought Alice.

      ‘Your mother married a Tamil, that was the problem,’ Jennifer said, knowingly.

      The baby’s cry was less intrusive, now. Outside the window a crow hawked harshly and they could hear the sound of saucepans being scraped. Singhalese voices rose and fell in the hot, lovely air. Without warning, Alice felt she too might start to cry. She wanted to go home. The air conditioning was too cold and her arm was hurting.

      ‘My head hurts,’ she told Jennifer. ‘I think I’m reacting to the smallpox, you know. I had to have it because of going to England.’

      After their hurried departure into the sunlight her arm hurt less. And much later on, in the evening, she listened to her mother recounting the visit.

      ‘She wanted me to leave,’ Sita was telling Stanley.

      From behind the door where she listened, Alice heard her mother’s terrible pleading tone. She was certain Sita’s face was pleading too. It made Alice grind her teeth.

      ‘You shouldn’t have gone,’ Stanley said, sounding bored.

      ‘I didn’t want her to think I was jealous. We went to all the hospital appointments together, I had to visit at least once.’

      ‘Well,’ Alice’s father said, ‘we’ll be out of this hell soon enough. Thank God!’

      The next day at school Jennifer avoided Alice. She had made friends with a new girl who had joined their class while Alice had been away. The new girl was called Vishvani and she too lived in Colombo 7. The chauffeur drove

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