Shades of her failed Junior Cambridge exam, perhaps; even at forty she still blurs the odd word or two. She puts an arm protectively around Anil’s shoulders, and feels something crackle under his shirt. She takes a deep breath and plunges her hand in, next to his skin. Eyes shut, of course, my canny young grandmother knows better than to look. She pulls out an envelope, limp and sodden with oil from his body.
Sungai Buloh Leprosarium, it reads. Anil Panikkar, discharged to the streets. Non-infectious.
And there’s a great, glorious government stamp to attest to the truth of the words. This stamp doesn’t slope off the page, it doesn’t ruck itself up in creases or fade where the ink runs out. This stamp has its hands on its hips and it’s proclaiming with all the breath in its lungs that the Panikkar son and heir has finally come home.
It’s an evening of rejoicing after that, an evening of eating and drinking and making merry. A rather silent evening, certainly. Perhaps not so much eating and drinking as would be expected either. So, an evening of the eyes instead.
Mary sits on the top step of the verandah, her gaze fixed intently on her brother. She’s produced a bottle of cod-liver oil for him, to build up his condition, and every few minutes she raises a finger to remind him to take another gulp. The hurricane lamps can flicker and smoke, the kueh can congeal on their plates and the tea go cold; the ghosts of drowned women can clamber out of the wells and stamp their feet till they bring down every durian in Pahang, but nothing will make Mary take her eyes off Anil.
And a pity it is, too. Because as she sits there, eyes on her brother and slapping automatically at mosquito bites, Mary misses rather a lot.
The way Anil looks at Francesca, for a start. When he left he had a boisterous, skinned-knee split-lip thug of a toddler nephew. Now he’s being faced with a blossoming teenage girl, her hair plaited and her body hinting at all kinds of things under a clean pink nightgown. Anil, whose body hints at all kinds of things too, doesn’t know what to make of her. Nephews don’t turn into nieces – Josephs don’t turn into Francescas – and that simplifies things. This girl, then, can’t be anything other than a beautiful stranger. He doesn’t, of course, say a word to her but as the evening express train whistles a drawn-out note in the distance, Anil tumbles head over ulcerated heels in love.
And Francesca herself? Mary strokes her daughter’s hair in the lamplight, feels the flicker and shine of it under her fingertips. Francesca’s watching Anil too, her head turned to him like a fern after rain. The whole time Anil’s been here, Francesca hasn’t said No! once.
Agnes is watching everyone else. She always is: Agnes has grown up quiet, overlooking and overlooked. She sees the love in Mary’s steady gaze, she sees the twining glances of Anil and Francesca and she does her desperate best to keep up her Christian cheer. Agnes will for ever reproach herself for having said nothing that night. She’ll wear herself out with new ways to do penance; she’ll work her fingers to the bone for charity and sacrifice every dollar she makes. But she’ll never make amends – Ammuma tells me now, snapping an elastic band around my plait – for holding that non-existent tongue of hers.
Ammuma brushes the end of my plait against my cheek. ‘That Agnes, ar,’ she says.
She coughs again, and a trail of blood and spittle clings to her chin. Her eyes are dreamy and filmed over. The sun beats in through the windows, and our shadows lie tar-black on the sheets. The whole room seems to quiver with heat, with the low, strong pulse of machines keeping Mrs Selva alive. Ammuma looks desiccated against the pillows, a grinning skeleton held together with oxygen tubing and bad intentions.
‘The war was over for ten years, when Anil-Uncle came back,’ she says. ‘So Francesca was …’
‘Sixteen years, Ammuma,’ I remind her gently and she gives me a black look.
‘Ar, very clever.’ She flicks a finger at my blouse. ‘You think I need to go to some Canada university to wear tight tops and learn to count, is it?’
‘So. Sixteen years. Aiyoh, too old for bothering Anil-Uncle like that. Not a moment for him to drink his tea.’
In fact, Anil has all the time in the world, and more tea than he knows what to do with. Francesca stations herself by the stove, dousing it each morning with enough kerosene to choke it. As soon as Anil’s had his tea, she lets the fire go out. The rest of them, so far as Francesca’s concerned, can subsist on old-food-cold-food-no-food, but Anil must have his hot drinks.
She’s in love with him, drowned in desire until she almost forgets to breathe. She fixes him with her eyes – weeping with kerosene and love – and refuses even to blink. She doesn’t say No! any more and hasn’t for weeks. With Anil’s scent in her nostrils strong enough to slice, there’s nothing she wants to deny.
And Mary is completely oblivious.
‘Anil, the child’s bothering you? You send her away.’
Anil blinks at his sister. They’re sitting together in the back of the compound, squashed together on a garden seat by the cool draught of the bathroom window. Mary coughs, covering her mouth. Blood spatters her palm, and she wipes it casually on her skirt.
‘Anil? Is Francesca bothering you?’
‘Fran-cesc-ca’, Anil says carefully. It’s the first time he’s said anyone’s name but hers, and Mary’s delighted. She leans close and gives him a fierce hug. The movement makes her cough, again, and Anil covers her mouth with a gentle hand.
‘No!’ Francesca’s been crouched in the
