demanded Alice. But Jennifer, having reached the extent of her knowledge, pulled a face, refusing to say another word.
After that Alice had been silent, sharing her dark thoughts with no one, not even her grandfather. She simply hoped the baby would die.
‘I know,’ Mrs Perris was saying in a low voice, moving her head from side to side. ‘Ayio! I heard it on the news. Rioting in Wellewatha, for the second time in a month. This is turning into a witch-hunt against the Tamils. I thought of you last night, child. Is your husband okay?’
She glanced towards Alice, who pretended to examine the scab forming on her knee.
‘Yes, yes,’ Sita said, lowering her voice.
‘Thank God he came home before it started, you know.’
There was a pause and both women fell silent. Then Sita looked around nervously.
‘Did I tell you our passports have arrived?’
‘Really! That’s good news, isn’t it?’ the teacher said encouragingly.
Sita nodded.
At least now we know for certain we can leave.’
Mrs Perris placed her hand on Sita’s arm and squeezed it. Alice looked curiously at them both, not understanding but struck by the look on their faces.
Earlier in the year Mrs Perris had been widowed. The change in her had been shocking. Her husband had been killed in the riots in Jaffna. Everyone agreed he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Alice had wanted to find out what the wrong place was, but again no one would tell her. She tried asking her father but Stanley told her to go away and stop bothering him, and Sita told her not to talk so much.
‘They’re all bastards,’ she heard her father tell her mother.
He was in one of his bad moods at the time. Alice was aware that her father knew all the bastards in Colombo. Even Grandpa Bee was impressed by this fact.
‘Well, Stanley certainly knows a bastard when he sees one,’ she had overheard Bee say.
At the time, Alice had been standing behind the door listening intently, wondering if she too would be able to recognise a bastard if she ever saw one. Bee had been speaking quite softly, under his breath, but even from behind the door Alice had detected a curious note of triumph in his voice. Bee had been unaware that Alice was nearby.
It was only her grandmother, being more knowing, who had shushed him sharply.
‘Be quiet,’ she had scolded. ‘The child might be listening.’
At that, Alice, pretending to be a stork standing on one leg, balancing on the ball of a foot, nearly toppled over. It was true she was always eavesdropping. Listening was something that had become second nature to her; straining her eardrums until they nearly burst, standing with her mouth open behind half-closed doors, worrying a piece of information as though she was a dog with a fallen coconut, coaxing it to split open and reveal its secret. Even Jennifer had congratulated her on her skill.
‘You do have a nose for scandal,’ she had observed.
Alice hadn’t known what a scandal was, but she did know that the world was full of unresolved, interesting stories that everyone conspired to keep from her.
After the bastards had killed her husband, Mrs Perris had eventually returned to school. The children waited curiously to see how she would behave. Thirty pairs of eyes swivelled silently towards the teacher as she walked into the classroom. She wore a white sari, the Kandyian way. It was meant to make her look more Singhalese, but all it did was make her unfamiliar. Every time anyone spoke to her she looked as though she might burst into tears. Very soon the whole class, which collectively was more cunning than people realised, saw that Mrs Perris was completely changed. Once she had been a woman who loved teaching. Now she appeared not to notice when the children misbehaved. The class, working together, seized the opportunity. Led in part by Jennifer, they became unruly. The noise brought out the teachers from the other classrooms, stampeding like a herd of elephants. Everyone wanted to see what was going on in Mrs Perris’s once perfectly behaved class. Some of the teachers tried to stop the noise. Some of them looked at the widow with pitying eyes, as if they were thinking, ‘Well, she’s done for!’ It was as if a gong were sounding in Mrs Perris’s head, stultifying her. I’m finished, it banged.
‘She looks terrible,’ Jennifer declared with conviction, ‘especially around the eyes.’
Alice disagreed. Jennifer was her best friend, but often Alice felt the role was unsustainable. Being friendly with Jennifer was like taking a ride on the back of a tiger. You held on or got eaten alive.
‘My mother said Mrs Perris’s husband turned blue when they killed him,’ Jennifer told the class with relish. As though someone had coloured him with dye!’
In spite of herself Alice was agog, her eyes turning into saucers of amazement. But she liked Mrs Perris and did not want her hurt by gossip, so she decided to challenge Jennifer.
‘How does your mother know?’ she demanded.
Jennifer scowled, unused to being contradicted.
‘She went to look at him, silly,’ she said, her face so close that her sugary hot breath from the toffee she was secretly eating poured threateningly over Alice.
‘Like this!’ And she pinched Alice’s arm, hoping to make it blue. ‘He was in his coffin, you know, men,’ she added, making her voice rise and fall. ‘And his lips were swollen, just as if a mosquito had bitten him.’
She narrowed her eyes and stared intently. Was Alice by any chance squeamish? Alice hesitated.
‘I don’t believe you. Dead people are supposed to look peaceful,’ she said finally.
Jennifer snorted.
‘You’re scared,’ she had observed shrewdly, and then in a final insult, ‘baby!’
After that she had refused to say any more on the subject. And Alice, whose passionate thirst for knowledge palpitated vainly in her chest, was not prepared to beg for any further information. There was a peculiar sad stillness in Mrs Perris’s face that made her appear frail and strangely beautiful. It both puzzled and fascinated Alice. Once or twice she had tried talking to her father, but Stanley just yawned and poured himself another whisky.
‘Those bastards get away with everything,’ was all he said in his predictable way. ‘Sita, can you get me some ice?’
Alice had watched as her mother left the clothes she was sewing for the baby and went to fetch the ice.
‘Time for bed, Alice,’ she had said, noticing her hovering about.
Still Alice continued to be preoccupied by Mrs Perris. On her last visit to her grandparent’s house she brought the subject up with Bee.
‘Mrs Perris looks transparent,’ she told Bee.
Transparent was a word that interested her.
‘It’s as if you can see right through her.’
Bee listened gravely. He waited until she finished speaking and then he nodded.
‘It’s called an afterglow,’ he said re-lighting his pipe. ‘Like a star as it falls; full of light. Like a blessing. Why don’t you try to draw her?’
So Alice had drawn her, and Mrs Perris had asked if she could keep the drawing. Alice wrote her name in wobbly paintbrush writing and gave it to her without a word. Privately she told her grandfather it had not been a good drawing.
‘I didn’t want to draw her as if she was crying,’ she said, ‘because she never cries.’
Bee had chewed on the end of his pipe.
‘Absence is a presence,’ was his only comment, but she sensed he understood. There was nothing her grandfather did not understand, thought Alice,