Homesick (29 page)

She would tell her cohabitants: but she cannot speak. Her trousers are so loose now, after five weeks, that she has had to use some rope Swami found for her to hold them up. She doesn’t mind. When they sleep at night, she and Swami sleep on the same mat, and he snuggles to her, and she feels safe only if a part of him touches her. It is presumed by the people in her tent that she is his mother. Or aunt. It doesn’t matter to them. They are all family now, and Preethi wonders if in reality they could be related. Who is to know? She cannot speak to find out.

There is a peace in the camp: they are aimless, dirty, disabled by soldiers who hold guns. Most there mourn losses that Preethi finds difficult to fathom. She is scared, desperate to be released, and yet here there is a sort of home, under the torn tent, with Swami and the old women. She can be busy and helpful: in the makeshift hospital she helps a midwife as she turns a breech baby, she mops at the child when it is born and exhausted, wiping it with a torn-up sarong. She helps to cook, sloshing rice and lentils together over an open fire. It is exciting, like playing house when she was a
child.
Here, she realizes one day, reduced to nothing, she has achieved a purity of happiness. And she is ashamed, because all around her is death. All around her people wait to die as the war comes closer like a menacing animal.

One day she sees a man she recognises. He is beyond the fence, inspecting the camp. She knows him: it is Gertie’s brother, who argued with her father at her parents’ New Year’s Eve party. His stomach is fat, but the rest of him is still lean, his face foxy and clever. He wears the dark green uniform, short-sleeved, but incongruously there are many ribbons on his left chest, and his general’s hat makes him seem taller. Everything about him seems big, robust. He is an anomaly in the camp, so clean and ironed, as if one of the gadgets from her kitchen had journeyed to her, as if it had personified itself—one of her knives—like a Disney cartoon. And she: she would be the princess. She cannot help herself, and moves forward to see better. Swami is with the other children, roaming about. The old man in her tent is asleep; the women crouch with family members under a tree farther away. So no one sees the general spot Preethi, leaning against the barbed wire. No one can tell Swami where she has gone.

•

Six months later, she realises that Simon is telling the truth: their house is to be sold. The kitchen, the bedrooms, the bathrooms, all places of infinite comfort and beauty, are to be swept out from under her, and soon another family will be there, as if Preethi and Simon’s twenty-five years were make-believe. He has lost his job, the downturn ending his false success: his pride is gone. She realises that everything rides on the selling of her book.

The first agent’s letter said, “… 
you write beautifully, but
the actual story itself wasn’t quite persuasive enough
.” The publisher who had got back to her was worried that the war in Sri Lanka would simply not interest an audience: it is a small island, its infighting interesting only to those connected to it, and perhaps some pinko-Marxist
Guardian
readers. As an afterthought, they said, “
The storyline with the general is compelling
.” Every day she thinks of them, the family in the tent with her. Every day, when she wakes, she imagines Swami’s eight-year-old head resting on her arm, imagines kissing the tufty hair. She does not allow herself the memory of his broken body lying under a tree.

Simon has busied himself with the sorting of things, putting books into boxes marked S or P. They are to separate, because he cannot stand his own guilt. There is no one else. The lover was finished with before Preethi went to Sri Lanka. He is eaten with guilt and anguish, and although Preethi wants things to go along the way they did before, they cannot, because
he
cannot … be for her … never mind, she thinks. She won’t think of what Simon cannot do: she will simply save herself, and save him in the process. There were people, a person, she could not save, and forever she will try to save him, in whatever she does.

Sri Lanka is ruled by a president who brutalises one race while saving his own. He has a moustache and a mass, flag-waving, loyal following. It doesn’t take her long to make the very small leap from fact into fiction. She thinks maybe Zimbabwe? The oppressed there were white—that should appeal? Iraq is discounted (too fresh); Gaza, too. She takes her laptop to a coffee shop, and in an afternoon, so desperate for money she forgets the existence of her moral compass, her general is German, Swami a Jewish boy. She, too, is Jewish, and all the inmates of the camp are white. They don’t live in a tent but in muddy barracks
in a cold winter in the 1940s. It is fun, easy to rename Deva David, Ranjini Ruth. And Swami becomes Daniel: for that was the source of her passion for him, his arm. She retells the story of the general:

That “no,” she shuddered in the coffee shop. That “no” that killed Swami.

Throughout their marriage, when they argued, Simon would say, “You think in black and white—in your world there are no shades of grey,” and this has defined her: she believed him. When the book was finished, sent off under a male pseudonym, and bought after a bidding war, she had time to think. Her viewpoint was the same as all people in a foreign country, she imagined. Either you are rich and belong to the class who rule, or you are not. Either you are seen to belong, or there is always the question behind people’s eyes: who are you, why do you speak with that perfect English accent? Are your motives completely clear? Are you
for
us? And when she was in Sri Lanka, in the camp,
she saw this, too, in black and white: no colours in between, just alive or dead.

She wins awards for the book but refuses to partake in the circus of publicity. The more cut off from the world she becomes, the more curiosity is generated. The house is saved, though. Simon and she start to live again, hermitlike, of course, but together. Their children don’t know of her success. They think it is a lottery win that has created this new world for their parents—where everything in the house is renewed, apart from the kitchen. They are glad of it for her: their anguish when she was lost turned to anxiety for her health and constant checking on her safety now she was home.

Finally, someone who read the slush pile at an agent’s at the beginning of her process Twitters:
“This book came through my hands, but was set in an entirely different country.”
And Preethi is found out.

•

Six months before, the general asked for Preethi a third time. The women in the tent instinctively protect her. She understands Tamil now, says a few words—
I’ll be all right, feed Swami
. They are getting better rations thanks to the general’s fascination with her. He gave her chocolate after he fucked her—she took it to Swami. The general told the camp commander to feed her well. He has offered to get her out—her passport fell out when he pulled at her clothes.

“British passport, after all,” he says.

“But I need to bring my little boy.”

“What little boy? One of these?” He indicates the children leaning against the fence through the window of the commander’s hut. “Vermin! They are trained—brainwashed! Why take one of
these
? You are Sinhala, too.
Take a poor Sinhala child, if you want. Not one of these
rats
.”

“He is my cousin’s child,” she lies. “I have to take him home.”

“What? To England?” His laughter comes from his shaking belly. She hates him, wants to be sick. His ooze trickles down her leg. But she stands straight and looks him in the eye.

“Yes, to England. I am a British citizen, married to an English man. You will contact the British consulate and—”

“Yes, yes.” He dismisses her with a shake of his hand. He has lost interest now. She does not leave. “Go, go,” he says. He plays with the stud on the leather revolver holster. It is beginning to swelter in the hut. She doesn’t know what time it is—her watch was bartered weeks ago.

“Please. For Gertie,” she says softly. “Call the consulate, tell them I’m here. Please?” He looks at her. She remembers the young man he was, at her parents’ house in London. “What happened to you?” she said.

“Get out,” he says wearily. And she goes. As she leaves the hut she looks toward the children, and she sees Swami clearly, his wonky arm held before him as he runs.

•

Someone comes to the house and knocks on the door. Through the glass she can see a face: she thinks it is brown. Sri Lankan, maybe. Simon is out. She should call the police. She is worried. She is down the corridor, peering around her kitchen door. She watches the outline. She knows it, it is
him
. She sees clearly what will happen when she opens the door. She is afraid, the way she was when Swami first pulled her on top of him. She is still, frozen, her mouth dry, her instincts clear. He has come to rape her again, come to
kill her. All her wealth means nothing. She has bought her husband, bought her home, but this man at her door has more power. She is petrified. When she was small, she was scared of monsters on the stairs, saw people’s faces in the paintwork, and it is this primeval dread that comes upon her now, the fear of the darkest night.

“Who is it?” she shouts. And hearing her voice, hearing the anguish as if it were apart from her, she remembers Swami’s little body on the ground, the eight-year-old head seeping its purple puddle into the red earth; she remembers his eyes, still open, looking to her, and the women in the tent rushing toward her, pulling her away as from somewhere came a clamour: her heart tore in two, and its noise loudly screamed into the white sky.

No answer. Here is Preethi walking backward into the kitchen, but the knocking is more insistent. She runs to the knife block and takes the fruit knife. Holding it in front of her, she walks unsteadily to the door. If it is him, she will kill him. She hates him: yes, he brought her to Colombo, getting the glory and the thanks from Simon and her children, but he exacted his revenge. She saw him order the child shot. She saw him point at Swami, and the young soldier pull the boy with his bad arm, swing him, and in a synchronized movement, bring his pistol up and shoot. That soldier was the general’s gun. She sees it backward and forward even now as she walks to the door, as she opens it, holding the knife behind her.

It is Simon. His face had merged with the stained glass of the door. She drops the knife. “What is it?” he says, and his tenderness, his kindness, his ordinariness make her cry. She does not stop crying for weeks, and eventually, after a visit to an exclusive rehab unit, she is allowed home, into Simon’s care, and she is finally, irrevocably broken.

P
reethi looks around the cemetery chapel. There are a number of faces she recognises but cannot place. She is trying to spot Nandini. Near to the front, she sees her grey hair and notices she wears a nice green blouse and a brown skirt. Preethi and Simon are in black suits, sunglasses still on, though the chapel is dark. Nandini has not turned. Preethi whispers loudly, “Mum!” and Simon takes her by the elbow and guides her down the aisle. She trips on a piece of carpet, but she is not drunk. It was only a nip in the car. Simon slips into the pew next to her and leans over her to kiss Nandini on both cheeks. God, she hates Simon. What a weak, feeble man she married, she thinks. She hates his simpering smile as he retracts back. Her mother studies the side of her face.

“What?” Preethi asks loudly. Nil is on the other side of Nandini and leans forward to say hello. Preethi smiles at her but says nothing. She picks up her handbag and rummages in it, looking for a tissue and a mirror. She looks at herself, brushing hair back from her made-up face, bares her teeth to check for lipstick, adjusts the sunglasses but doesn’t take them off. Nandini stares straight ahead. “You all right, Mum?” she asks, loudly. The chapel is hushed, and she is aware that around her people are staring, and some are deliberately looking away.

“Preethi,” Simon whispers, “why don’t we go and take a walk around the block?”

“Why?” Then she looks at her mother. “What?” Nandini’s jaw sets hard, downward. She leans into her and whispers, “Whatever I do, it’s just …”—but Simon takes her arm and almost yanks her up. “All right, all right,” she says, and they walk quickly out into the sunshine, her feet moving faster than they should. She feels like a child being lifted.