Brixton Beach Read Online Free Page B

of them, least of all Sita, would be able to predict how things might go. Worried and deeply hurt that she had not trusted him enough to tell him about Stanley, Bee had withdrawn into silence.
    When they had finally met, he had found the relationship genuinely puzzling. What was the attraction? he asked Kamala. Kamala had no idea either. Night after night they lay awake discussing their eldest daughter, getting no closer to the truth, for Stanley was a strange, uncommunicative man. Nothing the family could do, not even May’s winsome ways, had succeeded in drawing him out or dispersed the coldness that was, they felt, part of his character. Sita, the daughter who had been the closest to Bee as a child, now seemed uncomfortable in her father’s presence.
    On their first visit to the Sea House the couple had stayed only for the evening. Sita had hardly spoken. It had been an awkward distressing event and the little information they did glean was unsatisfactory. Stanley worked in an office in Colombo. He was a stenographer, he told Bee, working at a firm that imported fruit from abroad.
    ‘Why do we need fruit from the British?’ Bee had asked, forgetting to hold his tongue. ‘Haven’t we enough wonderful fruit of our own?’
    His wife and daughters had frowned disapprovingly. But Stanley hadn’t seemed to mind.
    ‘Apples,’ he had said. ‘The British living here miss having things from their homeland. So we get apples for them. After all, we shouldencourage them to stay. It’s better for the country, safer for the Tamils, anyway.’
    Bee made no comment. He took out his pipe and tapped it against his chair. Then he lit it.
    ‘I want to go to England one day,’ Stanley had confided a little later on.
    He was eating the cake his new mother-in-law had baked hastily. There had been no time to make an auspicious dish for the bride and groom; this was all she could offer. The servant woman standing in the doorway, waiting for a glimpse of the eldest daughter, shook her head sadly. This was not the way in which a Singhalese bride returned home. It was a bad omen. The bride and groom should have been given many gifts. Jewellery, for instance, a garland of flowers, a blessing at the temple. The bride should have entered her old home wearing a red sari, to be met by her sister and fed milk rice. And before all of this, right at the very beginning, the servant woman believed, before the wedding date had even been set, the couple’s horoscope should have been drawn up. But none of these things had been done. It was very, very bad. As far as the servant woman could see, shame had descended like a cloud of sea-blown sand on this family. Sita had brought it to the house, trailing her karma carelessly behind her, fully aware but indifferent to the ways in which things worked in this small costal town. The servant felt it was a wanton disgrace.
    ‘I want us to go to the UK,’ Stanley had said, taking Sita’s hand in his.
    Watching him, Kamala had become afraid. She thought he sounded a boastful man.
    After we have children, of course,’ Stanley continued. ‘This bloody place is no good for children to grow up in. Everything is denied to us Tamils. Education, good jobs, decent housing—everything. The bastard Singhalese are trying to strangle us.’
    His voice had risen and he had clenched his fists.
    ‘Stanley!’ Sita had murmured, shaking her head.
    Bee had seen with a certain savage amusement that at least his daughter had not quite forgotten her manners.
    ‘Does your family know you’ve got married?’ he had asked his new son-in-law finally, ignoring his wife’s look of unease.
    What did Kamala think? That he too was going to behave badly?
    ‘Yes, yes. I’ve just told my mother. We’ll be visiting her after we leave here,’ Stanley said dismissively, lighting a cigarette without offering Bee one.
    He would not be more forthcoming. No one had known what to say next. May went over to her father and sat on the floor