We were frequently on the beach. Vik and I would walk on the empty morning sand to watch arrack-breathed fishermen draw in their nets as the crows went wild. Steve made sashimi with the freshest tuna that was just off the boat, he relished that, proclaiming it “the dog’s bollocks.” Now I have a memory of us on a beach, eating gunnysack loads of mussels, steamed only in their own juices on an open fire. The clatter of slurped-out shells on a tin plate, salt on the children’s eyelashes, sunset. Malli called this time of day “the sky is upon the table time.” That was his version of the early lines of T. S. Eliot’s “Prufrock.” I don’t know quite why, I often recited them to the boys.
We went to Yala many times. We’d been taking the boys there even before they could walk. We explored the scrub in a jeep, the heat rising off cratered tracks, our hair matted with powdery red dust. Vik understood the jungle, and I loved that. He’d be the first to spot a stone plover on a showery beach, he knew the long lush whistle of a bush lark. We always stayed at the same hotel. Each time we were there, Vik bought a “Checklist of Yala Birds” from the souvenir shop. I found these booklets in that same bag where Steve’s 2004 diary was. Vik had marked off in them the birds he’d seen on each trip. I flicked through quickly, on each page his happy little ticks in a red pen.
I’ve been returning to Yala over these years, and on the drive from Colombo when I’ve approached the Udawalawe reservoir, I’ve always looked away. Vikram loved this spot, where hawks sail upwind above the gleaming water. On the night of the twenty-sixth of December 2004, when I was being driven back to Colombo, I hid my head between my knees as that van raced along the reservoir. I can’t look because Vik will never see this again, I thought then. Six years later, I am on this same road with Steve’s sister and her family. But for the first time since the wave, when we come to the reservoir, I am able to look.
Our nine-month stay in Sri Lanka in 2004 ended on the first of September. We were back in our garden in London just as the apples were turning red. In school, the boys got badges at morning assembly for settling back well. So when Steve and I discussed plans for the Christmas holidays, it wasn’t hard to decide. The boys had rooted themselves well in Colombo, we should keep that connection close. Even a short trip would be fine. Just three weeks.
As always, Steve wrote in his diary various tasks he had to do in those three weeks. A deadline for a paper, a conference call, chores. I saw he’d written the date and time of our flight from London to Colombo, nine p.m. on December 8. There was no note about our flight back on the thirty-first, maybe he meant to do that later. But scrawled across the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, and twenty-sixth was the last word he wrote in that diary for 2004. Yala.
They never left. The wave didn’t scare away the pair of white-bellied sea eagles that nested by the lagoon near the Yala hotel. When I first came back here after the wave and spotted them, I didn’t dare watch. These were Vik’s eagles, not mine. Then I became compulsive. I needed to see them each time I returned. I couldn’t leave until I had at least a glimpse. I wanted their reassurance. But, please, I asked myself, reassurance of what?
Maybe I just needed their distraction. I’d gaze at the two eagles gliding the air thermals with such graceful abandon, unconcerned to hunt even. Other birds — waders, crows — are always in an alarmed frenzy when these great raptors approach. They screech warnings or fly behind them as a mob to harass them away, but the eagles are untroubled. Diverted by watching them, I could tolerate being here, perhaps. Here where I was robbed.
But there is a surprise. I am standing on the shore of the lagoon years later now, and don’t realize for a while that the two eagles I am watching are a different pair. Their wing feathers are smaller and not black but a dark brown. These are juvenile birds. Vik’s eagles have bred, and now there are four.
I’ve never seen this before. The young eagles are learning to fly. They lunge off from a branch, drift a few moments, then flap back to the nearest tree, urgently. Now they try again, but they tumble. They drop through the air for some moments, almost entangling their wings.
And look. An upside-down eagle. One of the young sea eagles is attempting to dive but is the wrong way around. It’s falling on its head, looks like. Legs splayed, talons pointing at the sun, white belly gleaming, head looking up at the sky, not down.
Eight
When it comes to pancakes, my mind goes blank. Try as I might, I can’t remember how to make a pancake. I am thrown by this, I who made pancakes so often. Am I so estranged from who I was? The boys ate their pancakes with a syrup of lemon juice and sugar. Steve had his with chicken curry and dhal. And they haven’t done this in six years now. I startle myself as I say this. As though it’s a new truth, I am stunned. I want to put a fist through these last six years and grab our life. Claim it back.
I want to be in our kitchen late on a Saturday morning as Steve walks in with a paper bag filled with bagels for lunch. I’d toast them with mozzarella, and tomato and basil and chopped green chilies. Steve and I will have a glass of Sancerre. The bagels at our local bakery were nowhere near as good as the ones we bought from the Brick Lane Beigel Bake when the two of us lived in East London long years ago, before the boys were born. We went to late-night movies at the weekends then, and on our way home stopped here for the steaming hot bagels that were pulled from those ovens all night. At three a.m. it was just us and London cabbies cramming into that brightly lit shop where you got a dozen bagels for a pound. We would tell the boys about our lost carefree nights. “It was so good then, we went out all night, and we didn’t have you to bother us so we could sleep as late as we wanted on Sundays.” They’d look downcast.
In the summer, at weekend lunchtimes, Steve lit up the barbecue. Squid marinated in lemongrass and lime and chili flakes. Slices of salty haloumi cheese and lamb chops and sausages from Nicos, our local Greek Cypriot butcher. Nicos always doubted that Steve was English. “The English know nothing about good food, how is he English?” he’d ask, and I’d tell him it was my good influence, and he accepted that.
And often, at the weekends, Steve cooked big meals, and we had friends over. Or his family visited and there would be more than twenty of us for Sunday lunch. He’d make our version of raan, an Indian lamb roast. We’d marinate a leg of lamb for two days in a mix of yogurt, almonds, pistachios, lots of spices, mint, and green chilies. Steve watched the roast, concerned that it would not be tender enough, throwing some gin on the meat when basting it. The meat, he’d say, must be so soft, it can be eaten with a spoon.
On quieter days we cooked duck eggs, ate them with crumpets. The boys were impressed by duck eggs. They cupped them in their palms to feel the weight, they tapped the hard shell. Vik would pretend to spin bowl with one, enjoying my agitation as he twisted his fingers around it and lurched forward, raising his arm. He eventually put the egg down, saying, “Calm down, calm down”—in a strange accent (meant to be Liverpudlian). This was something he learned from his father. Regular life. So I thought.