An extract from COUSINS

"Amitha's now a young lady and Lika's getting married. I feel so old," he said. Amitha noticed he was graying at the temples.

"You must get married, Upali. Aren't you tired of living on your own?"

Upali Herath laughed. "There's no hurry. No hurry. I'll be leaving here in a couple of months - been appointed Magistrate in Kurunegala. Must first settle down there and all that, no?"

Laura Abeyweera snorted. "You're not going to escape so easily this time. Now no excuses. Let me find a nice girl for you, Upali." She gave him an imperious tap on his shoulder.

"Is Ango still alive?" asked Amitha.

"Ango?" Upali Herath looked blank, then said, "Oh, Ango. She died years ago. What made you think of her?"

"I don't know. She came into my mind - no special reason." Amitha couldn't tell him she was thinking of her eighth birthday at Sevana. How much had happened since that day. She remembered how shy, even timid, Lika had been then. And now she was about to marry. Someday she too would marry. She tried to imagine herself in a white sari and veil but could not. When she married she'd cut out all the frills, the fuss. Maybe simply a registry office affair. She saw herself standing beside someone with a thin, intense face. And after that a house, children, entertaining visitors, the family coming and going, weddings and funerals, funerals and weddings; A strange mixture of desire and distaste filled her; But why worry about such matters now? She was after all very different from Lika. She wanted her life to be unconventional, to be full of surprises. A yet unknown world, people to be claimed as friends and lovers, awaited her. Wasn't that something to be thankful for? She settled back in her seat and looked out of the window. Groups of school girls in white uniforms in twos and threes walked on the edge of the road, clutching their books. All that was behind her. A glow of satisfaction filled her. They were now driving through the main street of Beruwela: sari shops next to hardware stores, eating houses, a bakery and that special cacophony of blaring radios, car and bus horns, bicycle bells and the shouts of pavement hawkers peculiar to bazaars. Then the grey road again, now straight, now following the curves of the coastline. Fishermen's huts, children playing beneath the coconut trees, the smell of sea-air in the nostrils and the sea a-dazzle with diamonds of light. Another bazaar: shops, eating houses, jostling crowds and the special bazaar hum and buzz. Then once again the grey road, the glinting sea;.

Charles Abeyweera slowed down. They were approaching a wayside stall selling fruit and soft drinks.

"Must be telepathy - I was going to ask you to stop. I'm feeling like a drink."

Laura Abeyweera took out her handkerchief and used it as a fan, then unfolding it wiped her face. Amitha glancing at her grandmother was struck by her clear-cut profile, so different from her Kalutara grandmother's round, plump face. How pretty her mother still was! She caught a glimpse of her own face in the driver's mirror. I'm beautiful, flashed across her mind, giving her a little shock of pleasure. She turned to look at the bunches of king-coconuts heaped on the ground outside and the pineapples in a shallow cane basket. The man behind the makeshift counter stared at her. The directness of his gaze was disconcerting.

"A thambili or a piece of pine?" asked her Uncle Upali.

She shook her head, saying "I'm not thirsty," though only a moment before she'd been thinking how nice it would be to bite into a slice of that pineapple right on top of the pile of the basket.

Laura Abeyweera was saying she wanted to wash her hands and wipe her face with a wet hanky. A young woman carrying a bucket came out of the house behind the stall with a child on her hip, and walked towards the pump a few yards away. Laura Abeyweera leaned out of the car window: "Here! Here! Aney; can you get me a little water to wash my hands and face?"

The young woman walked on, unhurried, leisurely.

Laura Abeyweera raised her voice: "I want to wash my hands and face, I want a bit of water."

The young woman turned her head slightly: "You want some water? You have two hands and two legs, no? Get it yourself."

At the pump she placed the bucket under the spout, crooning to the child on her hip while it filled, then picking it up she sauntered back towards the house without a glance at the occupants of the car. The stall-keeper's eyes followed the movements of his wife, his glance rested for a moment on her hips and buttocks outlined beneath her tight cloth, then turning away, he opened a newspaper and began to read.

Laura Abeyweera looked bewildered. She appealed to the stallkeeper: "I just want some water. To wash my hands."

He continued to read.

"Use a hanky, Laura. Here, have mine." Charles Abeyweera passed his handkerchief to his wife, started up the car and drove off.

"That - that woman - she - she was so rude! I asked her very politely for some water - would it have killed her to get it for me? She was going to the pump, no?""

"These days, Laura Nenda, you have to be very careful," said Upali Herath. "Nowadays people are very sensitive about even a hint of inequality. Now they're saying things like, we all have eyes, ears, mouths, noses, arms, legs - so what's the difference? Money is the only difference."

"We're all equally human, so to resent people behaving naturally is unreasonable. A cat may look at a king, one person can stare at another."

"I don't know about cats and kings and stares but that woman's behaviour, now that was not educated behaviour," said her grandmother.

"People like her and - that - that man - they resent us because we speak English all the time."

"I'm very glad I do," said her grandfather, "it's the language of Shakespeare."

"And have servants, big houses, cars - that kind of thing," continued Amitha. "That woman - maybe she thought you were treating her like a servant. Archi, if she had asked you to get her some water if you'd been going to the pump, would you have?"

"Now see what's happened to this child! That Hector de Souza's talk has filled her head with all kinds of dangerous ideas. Why should I be going to a roadside pump with a bucket in my hand? Just tell me why?"

"I can't believe Lika's twenty-four and about to be married," said Vimala Herath.

"I'm so glad she asked Amitha to be a bridesmaid. Now everyone will know there's a girl turning into a young woman in our house," observed Laura Abeyweera.

Amitha was embarrassed, then disconcerted. The cool, appraising stare of the man at the stall returned to her. She longed for the wedding to be over, to be back in Colombo, where the people around her behaved in the expected way, where she could dream in her own room and feel inviolate, safe from the probing eyes of strangers.
