Nine months later, no cries had come, as yet, from inside the walauwa; no labouring woman cries, no crying new baby, no mourning women. Alice’s father and her brother were waiting on the verandah. The servant was standing at the far side, studying a palm full of blown-down browned coffee blooms as if he had come upon flowers dropped from heaven itself. Later, for half a box of chocolates, he would tell Latha everything they said.

“I won’t go in and see her, Appachchi,” Arthur insisted, “for the same reason why you refuse. Such things are not done, at least if you follow the old ways.”

“You are not to tell me about the old ways. No. And when it was my turn, when it was your mother, at least I listened from the hallway. I did not hide on the verandah like this—”

“You mean hide in Colombo, no?”

“—but that is not to be discussed now. Aiyo! What an omen to give your sister on this auspicious day! Wait. How do you mean, Colombo?”

It was a full minute between them, a father-and-son silence. They were each in morning sarong cinched below their chests. Arthur’s was shock white and edged along its ironing creases with blue-grey dust; during his years abroad, where he had been sent by his father to become a doctor who would never have to return to this village, it had been folded and stacked in an almirah in his bedroom. Robert’s was also fine cloth and white, but it was patterned in faint diamonds and tea stains and cigarette holes, yellow and black, like burnt wedding rings. Robert was hunched at the shoulders from age and from the defeat of recent talk with his son, and also from the defeating prospect of another birthing day in the walauwa. Arthur was hunched from the coolness that could sometimes be early-morning upcountry air, a coolness that he had forgotten from his time in the heat and dirt that was cities, was Calcutta, where he had gone to London. The young man’s shoulders were also hunched from lying about medical college, from the knowledge that his father knew that he was lying about medical college and still would not relent in asking him to go see his twin sister in her first labour.

Robert made a clicking noise from the back of his mouth upon realizing that when Arthur had said hide in Colombo, this was said against Sam, who was not here with his wife in labour but of course, as usual, away in the city. His driver, Piyal, had left in the middle of the night to bring him. Robert might have agreed with Arthur, but there was an order to things. He would first catch his twenty-one-year-old son at whatever badness it was that had brought him, unannounced, eyes everywhere but level, home. And then he might see about catching his nine-month son-in-law at whatever it was he should have been caught at—whether secret city rogue or just a bad husband who, since his wedding day, had visited the village with all the frequency and feeling of a green government agent: periodically and never but pained-looking. And like a good wife, Alice had played bitter daughter and said that her husband’s absences were not just because of his business in the city but also from shame, because his new father-in-law, her father, had never even tried to discover who threw the dirt at him on their wedding day. And Alice was, by old ways, right. Robert should have. But he had done nothing. The very point of marrying her off this way was to free himself from having to do such things. What is a water glass? What is poison?

Not just himself. When his son graduated from the Buddhist boys’ college in Colombo but failed to win a Queen’s Scholarship to England, Robert had spent the family’s savings on his education abroad, and because by his own decree no doctor had lived in the village since his own father had fallen, his own son would not live here either, whether as doctor or Ralahami. As for the girl, he had married her off as he had. Let this city-Sam find and punish the man who threw the dirt. Let him contend with dry days and dead dirt and crops shrivelled and legions of old broken men waiting for nothing but more shrivel. Let him defend his house from the latest fish-stink moneybag and his low country chewing and his low offer. Let him chase off all the new charmers whistling through the upcountry these days, brown men in white suits speaking of the British Governors like they were brothers-in-law and batch-mates, sometimes wrapped above the waist in sarong and fine-jacketed and carrying on like the king’s men of old, their secret swords apparently ready to return the land to the glory days of Sri Vikrama’s Udarata. The politics, Robert and his villagers called those fellows. Salesmen and snake charmers all, introducing themselves as Congress one day and Legislative Council the next and National Assembly a week later and every tongue telling Robert that their coming to his village to seek his pledge of support was in fact their pledging their support and the support of the Crown or Congress or LC or National Assembly to him and his village. His son thought to shame him with talk of keeping to old ways as if, by 1930, old ways were anything but another slogan to be for or against in the Ceylon upcountry. Robert wanted none of it for him or his blood. And if his new son-in-law wanted justice, let him lash the dirt-throwing rogues to his motorcar and the nearest palm tree and ride. He lit another.

“It is your place to go in and see about her state,” Robert said again, “because you are, for us, the London doctor.” Songbird and screech filled the morning air, and now, also, tapped ash, blown smoke. “You are the first doctor to come to the village in many, many years. I do not mean for your studies to be wasted here. I don’t! Where all the medicine these people want is things for cooling and mashed-up rubbish from the forest for aches and pains, and I know your studies are not yet complete, but you are already more of a doctor than betel payments and mortar mash and pouring oil in the nose, no? Aren’t you? Unless—”

“Only in a place like this does the whole village have to find out whether or not the brother goes to see the sister when she—”

“Aiyo! Only in a place like this, you say. And I can hear it in your voice, what this place must look like to you, now, from where you have been and what you have become. Ruined. You are ruined for this place.” And this was success, Robert thought. Shame made into freedom from the birth-village. But why, then, return, unless— “And that is why I cannot understand why you have returned like this, unless—”

“I returned,” Arthur interrupted his father at the same point in Robert’s speculation as he had for nearly ten thousand such speculations since he had come home from Calcutta, where, until this last failing term, he had secretly been studying in the only medical college that would admit him while, through a series of go-betweens and confectioned letters, he’d allowed his father to believe he was, in fact, studying in London, “because this is my village. I am your son, the first-born and only son of the Ralahami, and this is my village. But then I receive your letter informing me that Alice has married a motorcar named Sam Kandy. The letter arrived in the middle of exams, and I blame it for what has happened. And so I have come to see about this, to make sure what’s mine is mine.”

“And your exams? Your results?”

“Daddy, may I have a cigarette?”

“Arthur, why have you come home now? What have you done? What has happened?”

“What have I ever done but what you have made me do? Did I ask to become an English doctor? Did I ever ask for anything but what’s mine by birth?”

“I decide what is yours by birth. And what’s yours is your sister’s dowry money, what’s yours is the tuition and boat tickets and Parker pen it gave you. Now tell me your results and go see her in her time.”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t, or you can’t?”

“I—can’t.”

Now Robert knew for certain. He didn’t know how his son had pulled it off, the letters were always stamped from England, and Arthur seemed to have read the letters Robert had sent to the address he had given, Euston Square, London, but Robert knew. The boy must have come home on the last of the tuition money, he thought. He wondered where he’d spent the rest of it.

“Son, putha, what colour are the lorries in London?”

“I can’t.”

Meanwhile, inside, Latha was about to pour out the broth when she thought she heard Alice calling from the back bedroom. She had started it cooking the evening before, and by morning it had boiled down by half. A full moon night, and between fits of sleeping until dawn Alice had been breathing Soo sa like Latha told her to. Soo sa But no, it was an outside noise, some songbird or other lonely at first light. Latha returned to the broth. Using one of the showy metal kitchen things the new husband had brought, Latha skimmed the pond-brown foam from the surface of the bubbling soup and smacked it on the ground outside the kitchen door, where a cat considered it until two dogs barrelled in. Then she stretched a piece of muslin over the rim of the pot and drained the marrowy liquid into a cup that she would take in to the girl, whom she had raised from birth to bride and now birth. Alice was not lying in the same room as her mother had been, but still. Same house, same high round belly and otherwise branch thin. She would also weaken too much if the labour went too long. And so she would be made to drink this cup and would be made to drink more. Latha could also have asked Ralahami for a spoonful from his brandy bottle, which he kept in his room beside his English shaving kit and Portuguese aftershave—more things brought to the village in the vehicle. Latha had a joke with the washerwoman and with Lal, the Ralahami’s servant: soon the husband would run out of things to bring and then start fastening pieces of the city itself to the top of his vehicle and drive them to Sudugama. In time the joke passed down into the village itself, so that whenever the motorcar was heard from far off, never more than once a month, they watched from their dark doorways half expecting to welcome home at last their borrowed memories and shared notions and rumours and legends of the city itself: English horses the size of elephants; Chetty men with chests painted like jungle cats; windowpanes and saltwater waves.

The brandy the husband brought a few months before would be fast-warming for the chills that would come between pushing, but Latha wanted him nowhere involved with Alice’s labour. Any him. When it came to babies born in this walauwa, Latha made no distinction between memory and omen. Even a man standing in the hallway was too much. At least the Ralahami seemed to accept this, she thought; he had been waiting on the verandah smoking and talking in low voice with Arthur since dawn. Later, for nothing more than some leftover sweets, she knew, Lal would tell her everything that was said between them. Meanwhile they had not come near the kitchen threshold even to ask for their own tea. Had she the choice, she would have sent the Ralahami and Arthur to fetch the husband from Colombo in the vehicle with Blue Piyal, as Latha and Alice had taken to calling the driver outside the boy’s hearing. But Alice had already sent the boy to bring the husband, who had sent the boy with the car from Colombo a few days before with instructions that when it was time, Alice should be driven down. He’d made arrangements for her to deliver at a city hospital, and if Alice thought it necessary, Latha could come too. Motorcar to city hospital and Latha could come too. Ha. Had she the choice, Latha would have given Blue Piyal a return route of her own devising, which the boy would have followed like a prayer, she knew, if only she said Alice wanted him to do it. A route that took father, brother and him, the husband, from Colombo to Galle to Hambantota, Hambantota to Batticaloa to Trinco, Trinco to Point Pedro to Puttalam, Puttalam to Kurunegala to the village. And by then, went Latha’s hoping, the men of the family would arrive at the walauwa to be greeted by Alice in her old age, Alice still living.

She would not mind such slowness for the women who had been sent for either, Alice’s aunties, the Ralahami’s elder sister and the younger, the bride-of-next-week as she was still known in the village. They lived with their fat smiling husbands and overfed sons and fat dowry daughters in Mahaiyawa, on what they thought was the far better side of Kandy town—you could tell from how they looked and looked around those rare times they visited. Who, upon their grand fussy arrival, would take over with Alice, just as they had at Alice’s birth, and at Alice’s wedding, and Latha would have to play along again, play like they knew better. And she would; she always did; she never but seemed to.

“Latha! Latha aiyo, it’s coming again, hurting!”

“Aney wait I am coming!” The broth splashing onto her hand, Latha rushed to the back bedroom, her bare feet pounding the bare floor.

When she reached the room the pains had already passed and Alice’s head was turned to the side, her lips pursing air. Her many gold earrings, which she had insisted upon wearing for when he came, played back the morning light shining through the barred window. Latha could still remember boring the girl’s ears with a lime thorn and then curing the bleeding pinpricks with the cut lime. How many times had Latha swept from the corridor into this very room so someone would find Alice hiding in the almirah, the old almirah that had been junked behind the kitchen two days after the wedding, when another, a hotel almirah from the city, had been sent in its place.

“Alice-girla, take this before they come again.”

“Who is coming? When is he coming?”

“Just take this will you.”

“Medicines from Aiya?” She had been born a minute after him but always gave Arthur respect as the older brother. She eased herself up to her elbows and wiped the sweaty strands of hair from her brow. Latha wiped too, needlessly, and then cupped her face, a jewel-perfect face finer than any hand save a mother’s deserved to touch. She leaned in, as she had so many times, with words and a voice and a look meant to be kept between them, to keep them as Latha thought they were—themselves unto each other and then came father, brother, the rest of the world, husband.

“Mad? You think I’d let Big London Doctor come near now?

This is strength for when you need it. I put only a little garlic. Drink before they come again.”

“Who’s coming? When is he coming? He has to come for this, no?” Alice Kandy had never known a married woman as anything other than a visiting aunty or a bowing villager but even such passing glances were enough to know that what was hers was not enough. Nine months of it and finally, now, there was no more smiling and excusing that his work in the city kept him so far away; no more ignoring the empty chair kept daily for him at table and the empty bed beside her own; no more pretending along with Latha and the smirking envying rest of them that the gifts he sent with his blue-eyed driver and his own weeks-apart day-and-night visits were the free and fine goods of a modern married woman. He had to come for this. She turned her head, looking past the first gift, her grand GOH almirah. Until the contractions came again Alice’s eyes stayed there, on the threshold that gave way to the morning-bright corridor empty of all husbands.

He had to come for this. If he did not, Piyal would say something. Piyal decided this again and again as he drove from the upcountry to Colombo, the Morris’s lights catching nighttime walkers and wheeling bats and the quartz-coloured eyes of woken dogs and so many insects that more than once he’d had to pull to the side and wipe a translucent furze of crushed wings from the headlamps. He would say something even in the new Englishman’s hearing, because she had said she wanted him, Sam, near for when baby came. And so she had sent Piyal to bring him back. And he, Piyal, would bring her husband back or he would say something, even do something, if he did not come for this. Alice, Madam, she called him Blue Piyal. Nine months he’d been her husband’s driver. Her Blue Piyal. Seeing her every few weeks, he knew how many earrings she wore in each ear and the singing of her bangled wrists going and coming. He knew where, whether upon or below her growing belly, she kept her hand when she was tired or laughing or pained. He knew every glance and angled view that could be had while she sat in the back of the vehicle.

Reaching Prince’s Building, where Sam had recently taken over Henry Paulet’s vacated office and apartment scheme, Piyal could hear them inside, talking. But Piyal knocked and entered anyway and for the first time in his adult life, he spoke first.

“Sir, please, you must come.”

Sam did not stand. His new Englishman turned in his chair.

“What, Piyal? Is she waiting in the vehicle?”

“Sir, please, you must come.”

“Why must I come, Piyal? Is Madam in the vehicle?”

“Sir, please.”

“Piyal. Is. She. In. The. Vehicle.”

“No, sir. She is in the village, and baby has started.”

“I told you to tell Madam she was to come to Colombo when it was time.” Latha.

“HA!” said the Englishman, Charles Curzon. “You told your wife to be driven here to have the baby? My God, on these roads! She’d give birth in the backseat after the first bump!”

“Sir, please, Madam said you must come.”

“Must come, is it?” the Englishman answered Piyal, looking at Sam, who said nothing. “Well then.” He cracked his knuckles. “Of course that’s the right thing to do. Shall we continue this conversation upon your return?”

“Piyal,” said Sam, “tell me, did you drive through the night?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is very good of you. I will tell Madam when we reach the village. Would you like to sleep and then we’ll go?”

“No, sir.”

“Right. Good news. Baby is coming?”

“Baby is coming, sir.”

“Right. And so I must go.” Sam stood and smoothed his vest. He walked to the door. Piyal and the Englishman followed and Sam held it open and Piyal went first and Sam put his hand on the Englishman’s shoulder and Piyal turned just as Sam closed the door and set the chain and they were already talking again. And Piyal went to knock and knock it down but what if he did and then said and tried to do and all of it for her but he was sent off for trying and never saw her again?

The next day, when they arrived at sundown in Sudugama, the boot crammed with toys and tins and dresses, Sam came to the room and waited for Latha to leave, who passed into the hallway with her arms full. Then he knelt beside Alice’s bed and touched her forehead and told her he would have come right away but the driver had fallen stone asleep, day before, at his office door. And Alice nodded with nothing behind it, too tired for grief or gratitude, too exhausted to care whether her husband had been beside her every moment since her own birth or come just now, decades later, the twins themselves grown and married and gone. A boy and also a girl; the boy was considerably larger. Leaving Alice asleep, Sam nodded to the sideways-smiling aunties in the front room, accepted handshakes from Robert and Arthur and gave out cigarettes and then asked Latha to see the babies. He counted them, their twenty fingers and twenty toes, and he left the next morning. He had to buy more toys, toys now for two, toys for twins, toys for boys, toys for girls. And so for years afterwards, Sam Kandy’s son and daughter would know him as the rest of the village did—as engine noise and parcel string, as a day’s flash of love and pinstripes.