Free Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne Page A

glass that she had found on the beach during her last visit stood on the window sill, exactly where she had left it. Everything was as before; only she, Alice Fonseka, had changed. Her guilt hung on an invisible hook in the thickening midday heat. Once, when she had been very small, a servant told her a story about a child who had done something bad. Afterwards, the servant told Alice, every time the child moved, every time she walked or sat down or played in the garden, the devil would walk behind her, dragging his chains. Recalling the story, Alice wondered if she too would be hearing chains soon? She listened, but nothing happened. Through the dazzling bright sea light far down below the cliff came the sound of a passing train. Its echo went on and on.
    She stared blankly at the sea. There was no way of explaining her unhappiness to herself. On the beach another group of children jumped in and out of the waves. From this distance they looked like small birds darting about, waving their arms in the air, free. Janake was still nowhere in sight. She watched the boys for a moment longer, hearing their faint laughter. Until this moment childhood had heldno threat for her. But as she stood watching the scene below, for the second time that day, the idea that things had in some irreversible way altered began to take shape in her mind. The sun reappeared with renewed force from behind a cloud. She longed to be down on the white sand, laughing at nothing and getting soaked. She longed to see Janake and have him tease her. Standing beside the open window, recalling her grandfather from earlier in the morning, she emulated what he had done moments before he had seen her. Raising her arms up, letting her body descend slowly to the ground, curiously, she tried to imagine how he must have felt. Such was her absorption that she did not hear the gate bang shut or the footsteps on the gravel. Esther’s face looking up at the window startled her.
    ‘What are you doing, Alice?’
    ‘Nothing,’ she said crossly, frowning, standing up. ‘What are you doing here?’
    ‘We heard the news,’ Esther said. She sounded shocked, unsure of herself. ‘Amma sent me to ask if you would like to come over to our house.’
    Alice was puzzled. Esther sounded unusually friendly.
    ‘What’s done is done,’ Alice told her, unconsciously echoing her grandfather’s words.
    Esther stared back at her. In the bright paintbox-coloured daylight her dress looked strangely tawdry, the traces of lipstick on her lips, drab.
    All afternoon Bee sat helplessly beside his eldest daughter while she slept a drug-induced sleep. Then the doctor who had delivered the baby came in. Together they had watched Sita. Her womb had ripped, her uterus would need stitching, and when she finally began to remember she would have to bear a different kind of pain.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor had said.
    Bee noticed how dark his eyes were, just like pools of rainwater.
    ‘She’ll recover,’ the doctor had told him, ‘physically, anyway. There will be no more children, but she’ll recover. The stitches will heal, the scars will be hidden, outwardly everything will be in order. I’ve made sure of that.’
    He shook his head. Then he told Bee he had decided to leave the island. He was no longer able to stay silent about all those things he was witnessing, he said.
    ‘I became a doctor so I could alleviate suffering, not add to it. But this place—’ he had lifted his hands in a gesture of incomprehension—’is turning me into a coward. I fear for my wife, my family. I am no longer able to do my duty as I should.’
    Bee listened without comment.
    ‘I’m going to Australia,’ the doctor had continued.
    Outside the room the noise of the ward drifted towards them. Bedpans clattering, newborn babies mewling, laughter, even.
    ‘Yes,’ Bee agreed finally, expressionlessly ‘My daughter will be leaving too. They want a better life for my granddaughter.’
    That had been all