LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      Last night was a million light years away. Remembering Jacob’s foolish questions he began to heave. Jacob, he thought, busy sucking up to the whites. And Thornton, the empty-headed beauty, what did he care about, except how he looked and what everyone thought of him? Only his mother, thought Christopher, incoherent now, only his mother had understood.

      ‘Come back,’ he screamed. ‘Come back!’ His voice was whipped by the sea breeze and caught in the roar of the waves. He stood screaming and choking as the seagulls circled the sky. ‘I’m finished,’ he cried. ‘It’s over.’

      He had not gone to watch the riots as Jacob suspected, or to join in the demonstration. His thoughts became disjointed. Everything that had followed was blurred. Racked by sobs, broken, desperate, he fell to his knees on the soft white sand. Raising his face towards the sky, he whispered, ‘I can’t go on.’

      Only a few hours earlier he had visited Kamala with a heart that brimmed over with hope. Carrying the tenderness that he showed no one else. Kamala had been ill, but seemed to Christopher’s anxious eyes to be much better.

      ‘You are better,’ he recalled saying fiercely, willing her to be. And Kamala, laughing (he always made her laugh), agreed.

      Her father was at his Galle Face stall, selling plastic jewellery. White butterflies trapped in Perspex, flecked with gold, dozens of bangles, pink, yellow and green. There was to be a demonstration tonight, and a march organised by the railway and factory workers. A peaceful march. Christopher met Kamala at the stall.

      ‘Let’s walk along the beach,’ he had said, for he had brought money with him. ‘I want to buy you some fried crab and Lanka lime. Then we can be happy.’

      Yes, that’s what he had said. He remembered it very clearly, being happy was something he could only do with Kamala. As they walked he had talked, as he often did, of his passionate desire for free state education. It was his favourite subject, his dream.

      ‘It must be offered to everyone,’ he had said. ‘Not just the rich but the coolies, the servants. In any case…’ he paused, while Kamala gazed admiringly at him, ‘why do we need servants anyway?’

      Kamala listened not fully understanding, but agreeing with everything. Full of pride. He had told her the Greenwood story again. He was always telling her that story. How many times had she heard it? But on each occasion she listened patiently.

      ‘By the time it was my turn the money had run out. They gave it all to that fool Thornton. And what did he ever do with it?’ he had fumed, unable to stop himself. He had known Kamala hated to hear him talk about his brother in this way.

      ‘You mustn’t,’ she had said, earnestly. ‘You mustn’t say these things. Your family is a gift, Chris. It’s bad for you to talk like this.’

      It hadn’t stopped him though. He had taken no notice of her. Last night he had begun again, moaning on and on about Thornton and the price of a decent education in this country. Never knowing how he was wasting time. Kamala had pulled his hand and teased him into a better mood.

      ‘Next year, after my sister’s wedding,’ he told her, ‘we’ll get married. I’ll speak to my mother. Just wait,’ he said, as if it was Kamala and not he who was in a hurry, ‘you’ll see, I will become a journalist.’

      He hated to think of Kamala sleeping in the shack with the cajan roof that let in the monsoon.

      ‘Soon,’ he promised, ‘you’ll sleep on a proper bed in a clean, dry bedroom with a roof made of tiles. Our children will have decent educations. All of them, not just a chosen few.’

      He had said all this. Only last

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